Family Ties
by Shade's Ninde
Summary: As the team continues to hold Kaldur's handling of the mole situation against him, they overlook something more important.  Will they fix their mistake in time?
1. One

I don't own Young Justice.

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><p><strong>Family Ties<strong>

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><p>The ride home was usually Kaldur's favorite part of a mission. It was the point at which he could know with utter certainty that his team was all there, all safe, that they had achieved their goal; and even if he had some reckoning with Batman waiting for him at the other end about how everything had gone down, the sheer predictability of it was relieving. KF would gorge himself on whatever food he hadn't eaten in the Bioship on the way there; Superboy would brood as M'gann chattered excitedly to him about something cool that someone or another had done on the mission; Robin would smirk and wait for him to get to the part about him, and Artemis would just sit back and watch them all (especially Wally) with an incredulous (albeit fond) look on her face.<p>

But this time was different. The silence was thick inside the Bioship, underscored by the hum of the engine and the faint crackling of the Wally's energy bar wrapper. At least on the way over, Captain Marvel's constant patter had filled some of the awkward, tense space between them, but the return trip had no such luxury. Kaldur could feel the eyes of the others on him from where he sat on the far front side but didn't know what to say. On some level, he wanted to explain himself, wanted to make them see why he _couldn't_ have told them about the mole, and how even if he had, none of them would ever have guessed that it was Red Tornado anyway – not even M'gann could read the android's thoughts. But he was too tired, and if he was being honest with himself, too full of self-doubt to say anything to them. Perhaps someone else would have figured it out in time and prevented it. Perhaps the tip would have kept them on their guard enough to avoid all that had almost happened. Perhaps he himself had divided the team by failing to return the trust they had all put in him…

When they disembarked from the Bioship, everyone split up without a word, leaving him alone with Batman. The Dark Knight watched them all go, impassive as ever, then turned to Kaldur.

"Everyone should be present for the debriefing," he said flatly.

"I…" Kaldur began. But he didn't know where the rest of that sentence could go. Forgot? Knew, but didn't say anything? Was glad, on some level, to see them go?

"Messed up," Batman filled in. Kaldur let his eyes drop to the ground. "Call them back."

"They will not listen."

His voice was quiet and full of doubt, and he knew that Batman could hear all of it but he had begun to think that Batman's anger at his failed leadership might be preferable to his friends'. With an unreadable look at Kaldur, the Dark Knight touched a hand to his com and said gruffly,

"All team members return to the mission room immediately."

There wasn't anything particularly special about the debriefing, just the usual discussion about what went wrong, whose strengths weren't put to their best use, what could be done in the future to prevent mishaps. The only real difference was the silence on the young heroes' part. Usually they spoke up occasionally to defend one another or to explain why they couldn't possibly have done X, why a particular situation had been unavoidable. But this time, Batman lectured uninterrupted. Yet Kaldur did notice that whenever he touched on a failure of leadership, of team unity, his teammates would share a knowing look. He couldn't have been more relieved when the debriefing was over.

As the team headed out once more, Kaldur turned to leave – he figured he would shower and rest up at home, rather than soak in the hostile atmosphere here – but Batman's hand descended on his shoulder.

"_Now_ we have our private chat," he said.

There was nothing Kaldur wanted less in that moment than to go over all his mistakes yet again. Leadership was a heavy enough burden for someone who wanted to bear it, but the fact that Kaldur had been thrust into the position without seeking it, and even so had done his best despite a team divided from the start what with Superboy's temper and everyone's hostility towards Artemis, it all made the sting that much worse. He hadn't asked for this.

"I don't need to tell you all the ways you failed to be your team's leader tonight."

"No," he replies, eyes downcast. At least this will be short. "I understand."

"Do you?"

He looks up.

"I placed my team in danger by failing to share the information about the mole," he began. "I further compromised their safety by failing to establish communications before the mission began. And I allowed Captain Marvel to be captured as a result."

"That's all true," said Batman, "But those are all ways you failed to lead. Not ways you failed to be a leader."

"I…I am not certain I understand."

"I've never doubted your ability to make the right decisions under pressure. My lack of faith in you is entirely grounded in your lack of faith in yourself."

Kaldur was silent. He couldn't tell if Batman was being kind or not (he rarely did, but this was especially ambiguous).

"You were right not to tell them about the mole," Batman continued. "Information like that would – and did – divide the team. You were right to prioritize rescuing Captain Marvel over the original mission. And you were also right in your assignment of specific tasks to each of your team members. But being a leader is more than making the right choices for your team. It's about commanding them. It isn't your job to trust them – it's their job to trust you, and your job to trust in your own abilities. They smell fear, Kaldur. They know it when you aren't sure of yourself, and that's when a team unravels. That's where you failed."

Kaldur was silent a moment, then nodded. The Dark Knight looked at him carefully.

"No one else can lead this team," he said bluntly. "Robin is too young, and none of the others have what it takes. Whether or not you want this, Kaldur, it is your responsibility."

"I understand."

This time, Batman seemed to take his word for it.

"Get some rest. You'll need to piece your team back together in the morning."

He uttered a quiet thank you and left. It was a few miles to his home, a small waterside apartment that his king had established for him when he had taken up permanent residence on the surface. Ordinarily after a mission he would simply stay at the Cave, but though he was exhausted, his mind was too cluttered to stay there. So he rounded the side of Mount Justice, making the short walk to the beach, and slowly waded in.

The water was cool and soothing on his aching muscles, and as soon as it was deep enough he dipped below the surface and began to swim. For him, it was the most efficient route home, and also the most pleasurable; he could help but relax a little with the moonlight shining on the surface above, the little luminous fishes darting around him, brushing his sides, the quiet and still of the underwater world. As he swam, it became easier and easier to forget that betrayed look in his teammates' eyes, the mess he had waiting for him in the morning. Down here, it was just him and the water. This was where he was supposed to be.

It was a long, long way to Atlantis, and Kaldur knew he didn't have time to make it all the way back home. But perhaps there was time at least for a detour. He needed to clear his head, and he couldn't do that on the surface, that much was for sure. So he altered his course, veered further from the coastline and further out towards the deep, where the current grew broad and strong and part of something bigger than itself. As his mind drifted, he found himself thinking that he was like the waves, in a way; at sea, they were majesty and power and grace and they belonged. But as the ocean grew shallow and they approached the land, they weakened, carried only by momentum and necessity, until they spent themselves on the sand and were no more.

He didn't know how long he had been swimming, only that he was now deep enough that the moonlight was nothing but a shimmer far above his head, and he had found some sort of peace, or at least the resolve to set right what had gone wrong in the previous few days. He would apologize, and he would do better. He would be what his team needed him to be.

It was then that out of the deep blue of the depths, something in front of him flashed a mechanical red, and everything exploded. There was one moment of unbearable noise and heat and light and pain, and then it was all gone.


	2. Two

"What gets me is that he's known us what, how many years now?" Wally was saying indignantly as he lay sprawled on the couch in the rec room of the Cave.

"Three," Robin supplied helpfully.

"Three years! Three years and he didn't even tell _us_ about any of this because nooo, we could be the _moles_, we could be _traitors_, we could be the bad guys in all this. As if we'd ever do that! And as if we'd ever accuse _him_ of any of that! Whatever happened to trusting your team?"

"Guys, don't you think you're being a little hard on him?" M'gann interjected uncertainly, seated across from the other two. "I'm sure he didn't think either of _you_ were the mole. Maybe he just worried that it would make you so suspicious of the rest of us, you would have a hard time working as a team."

"As if," Robin scoffed. "It's our job to work together. We would have found a way to snoop it out and still get the job done."

"Yeah and we would have snooped it out a lot faster, too," Wally added. "Kaldur barely even spends any time in the Cave and when he does, he hardly talks to us. There's no way he could have figured out what was going on when he's never even here."

"Maybe that's because all you two do is make fun of him," Artemis snapped from the entry, striding in to take a seat by M'gann. Superboy had arrived with her, but stayed off to the side, watching the others. With his superhearing, he probably didn't need to be any closer.

Wally glowered.

"That's so not true!" he objected. "And even if it were, he likes being teased! That's how we show him we care. He knows that."

"Does he?" asked Artemis.

"What do _you_ know, anyway?" Wally glared. "You've been here what, two months? And are you saying you liked how he was so ready to think you were screwing us all over?"

"No, I'm just pointing out that – "

"That what? You think you know Kaldur better than we do? Rob and I have known him since he's lived up here. Trust me, Artie, we know him. You don't."

"Wally, _shut up_," Artemis shot back hotly. "I'm just saying that what he did made sense. He's team leader before he's your friend, you ignorant ass. Can you wrap your thick speedster skull around that?"

"Yeah, but if he really can't trust us even to be on the same side, should he _be_ team leader?" Robin questioned.

Everyone was silent for a moment. Then Superboy turned and left, footsteps echoing through the Cave; M'gann floated up from her seat and went after him.

"What would you have done?" Artemis asked, turning to Robin this time. "If you'd been in his shoes. If someone had told you someone on your team was giving them information."

"I would have at least narrowed it down," he replied. "I would have looked around at my team and figured out who couldn't possibly be the mole, and I would have warned them of the threat, and enlisted their help in seeking it out."

"How?"

"Well, it couldn't be M'gann, because J'onn would have caught her," Robin began. "They communicate telepathically on the regular and she's said she can't hide anything from him. And it couldn't be Superboy, because unless Cadmus is somehow still in his head, he has no connections to give information to. And M'gann would have noticed, what with all the time they spend together and the fact that they both live here."

"Okay," Artemis said, frowning. "Anybody else?"

"Well I guess it's not fair of me to say that I would know I wasn't the mole, but I mean, think about it. Batman is the greatest detective in the world…do you really think he wouldn't notice if I were passing information to one of his enemies?"

"Probably not."

"Yeah. And we all know it couldn't be Wally because…well, he's Wally."

From the couch, Wally grinned.

"Solid reasoning," Artemis remarked sarcastically. "So that leaves me and Kaldur, then. How very flattering."

"Yeah well…we don't really know much about you guys," Robin shrugged. "Like KF said, Kaldur doesn't really share a lot with us. I wouldn't know if he were hiding something. And you…well, you're new, and we don't know anything about you either."

Artemis couldn't really argue with that.

"Are you okay?" M'gann asked concernedly as she floated to a seat opposite Superboy in the kitchen. "Are you still upset about what happened with Red Tornado? We're all okay now, Conner. You need to stop thinking about that."

"It's not…that," Conner frowned, looking over at the wall. "Not just that, anyway."

"What is it, then?"

"Just what they're all talking about. In there."

"Kaldur?"

Conner nodded.

"What about him? Are you angry?"

"No, not…angry. Just…I don't know. I don't want to talk about it." He frowned deeply.

"Conner…please," M'gann said softly. "You can tell me. It's okay."

He sighed, leaning back in his chair, and pushed a hand through his hair. His gestures were short and choppy and awkward as ever.

"I'm just disappointed, really."

"Disappointed?"

"That…even _he_ doesn't trust me."

"Does anyone else mistrust you?"

He gave her a look.

"The team thinks I'm…weird," he said. "Don't pretend you don't know it. They make fun of me and talk behind my back and think I'm strange because I don't get their little routines and their games and the way they talk. I thought…I thought Kaldur didn't do that. I thought he was different."

"_I_ don't think you're strange, Conner," M'gann said softly.

"I know you don't," he sighed. "I know you don't, M'gann. I just…Kaldur…has known me as long as I have thought for myself. So…all my life, I guess you could say. I had just hoped that he would…know me, I guess. Would know he could trust me."

M'gann was silent, unsure how to reply to that. She hadn't thought of it that way – that Conner had really spent his entire life with this team, that Kaldur had been (literally) his first contact with the world outside Cadmus. To have someone who had known you for as long as you'd existed, think you could betray them…

"I'm sorry," she said quietly at last.

"It doesn't matter."

He got up, heading for the stairs to the basement. M'gann knew better than to follow; he needed some time to sort this out for himself.

_You can talk to him later,_ she thought to him as he left. _When he comes in for training today…_


	3. Three

The first thing Kaldur felt when he awoke was_ dryness_. It wasn't just the usual sense he got when he was on land, but something stronger, something worse, the feeling that not only was he out of the water, he was too far removed from it even to sense its presence. It was the same dryness that had sapped his strength and felled him within hours of their arrival in Bialya, but this was cooler, more tolerable to his other senses. Still, the absence of moisture made his head heavy and blurred his vision. He didn't like it. Not in the least.

He opened his eyes and took in his surroundings– a small room, walls and floor of smooth concrete, windowless. A single door on the opposite wall, but no mechanism for opening it, no handle or push bar or knob. It looked heavy. Embedded in the ceiling behind some kind of thick plastic was a bright fluorescent light that cast a harsh light on the whole room. As for himself, he lay on a narrow bed made with soft white sheets; someone had tucked him in with a degree of care, and his chest and arms had been wrapped with some kind of gauze. So while the room itself was quite Spartan, someone had clearly intended to make him comfortable enough.

He pulled himself into a sitting position, wincing as he figured out just why the gauze was there – his front side was mottled with bruises and burns. Given the toughness of his skin, he had to assume it was the explosion that had caused them, since it took a sizeable amount of force to injure him at all. The pain wasn't so bad that he couldn't move, though, so he stood and walked to the door, running his hands over its surface to check for faults, then throwing a kick at it with as much force as he could muster. It didn't budge. As expected, it was unopenable from this side.

Walking back to the bed, Kaldur sat down on the edge of it and pressed a hand to his temple. The effort of trying to open the door, coupled with the unbearable dryness he felt, had made him dizzy. Where was he? Who had brought him here? What had caused that explosion?

As if to answer his questions, the door opened slowly, and a plain-looking man in a white coat stepped inside.

"Kaldur'ahm," he acknowledged with a nod. "If you would come with me."

Kaldur looked up in suspicion, but wasn't sure he had much of a choice. How did this man know his name? But to be sure, nothing would come of him if he stayed here. So he stood, more carefully this time, and stepped across the room to follow them man out into the corridor.

Like the room, everything in the hallway was bare concrete. No guards followed them, and on some level Kaldur was tempted to use a bit of his superior strength to force some answers out of the man who was leading him along, but he had a feeling that if he were among enemies, they would not respond well to such an action, and if he were among friends, there would be no need. So instead, he settled for asking.

"Where am I?"

"In a secure facility," the man replied, checking something on a clipboard as he walked along.

"Who brought me here?"

"Someone who cared enough to fix you up, obviously." The man gestured vaguely towards the dressing of his torso.

"Who?"

"Patience, Kaldur. I think he'll want to introduce himself personally."

Kaldur frowned.

"Where are you taking me?"

The man sighed impatiently and put down his clipboard, turning a corner and reaching into his coat pocket for a small card, which he waved in front of a sensor on another one of the unmarked doors.

"Here," he said as the door swung open on some kind of automatic hinge. "I'm taking you here. Go inside and have a seat on the table."

Kaldur did as he was told, stepping inside a room somewhat like the one he'd been in before, but much larger, with a higher ceiling and thin skylights that told him it must have been midday. The table in question was one like a medical examiner's, and at an expectant cough from the man behind him, he walked to it and took a seat.

"Now then, let's see how those burns are healing up," the man said, setting aside the clipboard and stepping up beside him. He reached for the bandages. Kaldur was tempted to stop him – this would inevitably hurt, and he still didn't know what this man's intentions were – but decided against it. His head was too foggy to pick a fight over anything just yet, and the man had made no attempt to harm him thus far.

When the bandages came off, the pain was intense, but Kaldur grit his teeth and made no sound. The man cleaned the wounds with rubbing alcohol and a mechanical sort of gentleness; when he was finished, Kaldur's skin felt dryer than ever, and stung slightly, but he knew from past experience that this was how it worked; he'd had similar injuries treated in the Cave.

Just as he let his mind drift back towards his teammates, and the fact that he was probably missing training, the door swung open and a new person entered the room – a tall man, well-built, with skin just a shade darker than Kaldur's own. He had a stern face, marked with a few small scars, and dark, intelligent eyes that looked Kaldur up and down with an objective interest.

The first man had just begun to wrap Kaldur's chest with fresh bandages when the newcomer held up his hand.

"Let me," he said, stepping forward. When the other man acquiesced, he took up the bandages and began to dress Kaldur's injuries with a tenderness that seemed incongruous with his cold demeanor. Watching him work, Kaldur struggled to recall how he knew this man; he was somehow familiar, yet he could not recall having ever met him…

"I know your face," he said finally, eyes narrowing. "You're Black Manta. An enemy of Atlantis, and of the Justice League."

"That is one of my names, yes," said Manta evenly, moving to wrap Kaldur's left arm in a fresh bandage.

"Then why are you healing me?" Kaldur asked. "You must know that I am sworn to oppose you. You have called me by name, in Atlantis. You know who I am."

"I do," Manta agreed. "I know quite a lot about you, actually, Kaldur'ahm. We have much to discuss."

Kaldur wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean. He frowned again, watching Manta's hands work as they finished tying off the last of the bandages.

"It was you who set off that explosion," he accused.

"No," said Manta, stepping back. "You did that yourself. It was dark, and you were careless, swimming into a minefield like that. You were distracted."

He could not argue with that, yet he could not help but remain suspicious. This was his king's greatest nemesis.

"Why bring me here, then?" he pressed. "Why treat my wounds? I am your enemy."

"Your word, not mine, Kaldur," said Manta. "But I have answered enough questions for now. There is more to me than you know, and I want the chance to talk to you face to face, away from…outside influences. But now is not the time. You are weary, and you must be hungry. Heems, bring him some food."

The first man – Heems, apparently – nodded and left the room, leaving Kaldur alone with Manta. The silence was thick, but Kaldur's head had begun to clear somewhat, as if a heavy fog were lifting from his mind, yet still, he could not completely focus, and the uncomfortable dryness persisted. Manta pulled up a metal chair from a counter at the side of the room and took a seat, watching Kaldur from a distance with a calm curiosity.

"Fascinating," he murmured after a moment.

"Do I amuse you?" Kaldur asked, eyes narrowing.

"No. You simply…remind me."

Kaldur turned away, now looking about the room for a means of escape. Whatever the story was about how he had come here, he knew of Black Manta, had already witnessed him bomb half of Atlantis to smithereens, had personally fought him. Manta's men had almost killed Tula. Manta's men had attempted to murder the Queen and the heir she carried. He could not be trusted.

Presently, the door opened again and Heems entered with a tray. Kaldur waited only a moment to see what was on it, just long enough to determine the presence of a cup, then he waited a calculated moment. The instant Heems came within arm's reach, he snapped his head up, arms reaching out to command whatever fluid was present, but to his surprise, a jolt of pain shot through his body, and instead of lighting up, his tattoos only glowed dimly, then flickered back to black. The water in the cup rippled, but nothing more. Trying to conceal his rapidly growing panic, Kaldur cast a glance at Manta, whose expression remained unchanged.

"What have you done to me?" he asked, jaw tight.

"Nothing permanent," Manta reassured. "But I had a feeling you would be less than eager to have a civilized conversation with me, given our history, so we've given you a little injection. Just enough to neutralize your powers for the time being. I am not going to hurt you, Kaldur. I thought it only fair to assure that you did not hurt me in return. You must be hungry. Eat."

Kaldur grit his teeth in frustration, but there was nothing else he could do. Knowing Manta, there were guards somewhere close by, and he had no idea where he was or what purpose he was to serve before they were done with him. For the time being, they seemed to wish him no ill – the benefits of playing along outweighed the those of attacking his captors, for now.

Accepting the tray, he ate, realizing only as he did how incredibly hungry he was. The water relieved the worst of the strange dryness, but it lingered on, dulling his senses and his thoughts. For now, there was nothing to do but wait.


	4. Four

"Where's Aqualad?" Black Canary asked disapprovingly as she shrugged out of her jacket and tossed it aside. "Training starts now."

"How should we know?" Wally asked, trying not to stare. "It's not like he tells us anything."

"He didn't say anything when he left last night?"

"No," said Artemis. "He left right after the mission. Didn't talk to any of us."

"Well we don't have time to wait around for him, so let's get started," Canary frowned. "Today we're practicing cooperative fighting, focusing on lifts and group blocks. Pair up."

The team did as she asked; the odd number let Canary move around them, switching partners and helping each person refine their own strengths and work on avoiding or improving on their weaknesses, but it left a pronounced discomfort in the room. It was rare someone didn't show up, and the last time it had happened, it had been Wally, delayed by what he'd called a "family emergency" and sporting bruises he wouldn't talk to anyone about . The message was clear: absences were bad news.

When they finished, and Kaldur had still not turned up, Artemis wiped sweat from her brow and dared to voice what everyone was thinking.

"Do you think something's wrong?"

"Maybe he needed the morning off," M'gann said, but she sounded uncertain.

Robin shook his head.

"He would have told us."

"Maybe he's pulled a Speedy and resigned," said Wally, trying his best to look like he didn't care. "Maybe he realized what a jerk he was to all of us and just peaced."

"You don't believe that," Artemis snapped.

"There's no point in any of you worrying about it," Canary interjected, cutting them all off. "We'll have someone from the League check in. Skipping training, particularly without informing anyone, is unacceptable. Hit the showers."

They did as she ordered, yet the glance shared between Robin and Artemis as they parted ways said that this wasn't the end of the story.

* * *

><p>Kaldur awoke, but it was impossible to know how much later; it seemed the light was always on in his room (cell?). The fog in his head was back and heavier than ever. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious before that first awakening, either. How long had he been missing? Was anyone looking for him?<p>

As he sat up and looked around, he noticed that a second tray of food was sitting in front of his door, which stood open. Apparently he was free to walk around. Leaving the food for the moment, he stood up and walked out into the corridor, looking around carefully for anything that would clue him in to his location. But everything was just bare concrete, unnaturally clean as if the whole place had been sterilized; it looked as if it may have been a warehouse or an industrial complex at some point, but someone had clearly repurposed it. For what? Kaldur still couldn't decide if he was a patient or a prisoner.

He padded down the hallway, barefoot, as always. As he turned his head to look down one potential corridor, a small pain in his neck made him lift his hand to it – with a dull sense of surprise, he found a small sensitive spot just below his gills, perhaps a needle hole. Apparently the drug had been readministered while he slept. That would explain the fog in his head, and the dull ache of his tattoos, at least. It wasn't pleasant.

It was a few minutes before Kaldur found a door that wasn't shut and locked. All the corridors looked the same, empty and quiet and bare, and he had just begun to worry that he wouldn't be able to find his way back when he had turned a corner and seen a warmer sort of light spilling from an open door. He approached it cautiously, taking care to make no sound as he stepped up to take a look inside.

Manta stood before a grand picture window that stretched from floor to ceiling, comprising two of the room's four walls and revealing a nightscape that tugged at something in Kaldur's chest: the ocean, lit by starlight and a half moon. By the shape of it, he could guess it had been two nights since their mission in India, since he'd been knocked unconscious and brought here, but the shoreline was unfamiliar to him. Still, to see the water that close, yet to feel so distant from it, to have his powers blocked and his innate connection with his home element severed, it all left a sour taste in his mouth.

"If it bothers you so much, I can close the blinds," Manta said without so much as a look at him.

Kaldur frowned.

"What do you want with me?" he asked impatiently. "I would prefer you get it over with. My team will be looking for me."

He wasn't entirely convinced of that, though; after the way their last interactions had gone, he wasn't sure any of them would interpret his absence negatively. They might have been relieved to have some time without him.

"Your team can wait," Manta said calmly, turning from the window to face him. "I have many things to discuss with you, Kaldur'ahm. But your mind is cluttered and your spirit is heavy. I want you to be at peace when we talk, and you are not. So tell me…how _are_things going with your…team?"

"You think me a fool," Kaldur spat back. The disdainful curiosity in Manta's voice had set something in him on edge. "You think I would speak to _you_ of League matters."

Manta gave him a cryptic smile.

"You misunderstand me, Kaldur. I am not asking you about League matters," he replied. "I am asking you about yourself. About how you are faring with the leadership you so clearly do not desire."

Stiffening, Kaldur tried not to show his surprise. How could Manta know that? They had only crossed paths once before, and then, the team had not been present. It had been a matter confined to Atlantis. Yet he could not deny that it was true.

"Leadership is not something one chooses," he said guardedly. "It is a responsibility one accepts. Whether I desire it or not is of no consequence."

"That seems to be the case with many things for you."

Kaldur frowned. He wasn't sure what Manta was trying to say, but the weight of the man's words bothered him – it was like he was holding back, refusing to reveal just how much he knew, daring Kaldur to find out.

"You know nothing of me," he said finally. "I will not play this game, Manta."

Manta sighed, turning back to the window.

"I know your name. It is only fair you know mine. We are here to talk as civilized people, not to fight as part of this game of heroes and villains. While you are here, you are not Aqualad, but Kaldur'ahm. And while I am here, I am not Black Manta. You may call me David."

_David_. The name was so infuriatingly unremarkable that it almost made Kaldur laugh. This was the man who attacked innocent Atlanteans, who destroyed centuries-old structures in their cities, who led squads of land-walkers into their waters to disrupt their peace. His name was _David_.

"I think we have a lot to learn from each other, Kaldur," said Manta finally, breaking the silence that had arisen between them. "When you are curious enough to seek it, we will talk."

And without another word, he left, brushing past Kaldur and disappearing into the corridor. For a moment, Kaldur hesitated, considering calling him back, demanding answers for the dozens of questions spinning through his head in that moment. But the glint of the moonlight off the ocean caught his eye, and he found himself stepping over to the window instead, gazing out over the water, tracing the shapes of the waves with his fingertip against the glass. Never before had he felt so far away from it all.

He glanced down. It was perhaps a few hundred feet down to the shore. If he could jump far enough, he would land in the water, would be able to swim to safety. But first, he had to break the glass. Knowing that he would only have a few seconds – doubtless the whole place was under video surveillance – he quietly stepped away, then wheeled around and threw his entire body against the window with all the strength he possessed.

Nothing. Not even a crack. Whether it was too thick, or he was too weak, or it was some kind of illusion – it had felt so damn solid, like steel, not glass – he could not know. But one thing was clear. For now, he had no choice but to play by Manta's rules.


	5. Five

The next day, Kaldur discovered that some of Manta's rules were less agreeable than others. Heems woke him in the morning, albeit not intentionally, with the power-dulling injection. The scientist had apparently thought Kaldur was fast asleep, and was thus surprised when at the slight prick of the needle, the Atlantean's eyes snapped open and he grabbed hold of the scientist, throwing him across the room with alarming force. He slid to the ground and moaned in pain as the broken syringe chamber leaked a thin, clear fluid onto the floor.

Kaldur sat up in bed, breathing quickly, hand against his neck where the needle had just barely pricked his skin. He was still not entirely awake, nor sure of what was going on. Heems, on the other hand, was groaning something into a small radio device he'd pulled out of his pocket, and within moments, four armed guards with faces obscured by black helmets filed quickly into the room.

Kaldur briefly contemplated going down without a fight, but the three-day fog in his head had made him irritable, and in the moment, it seemed positively cowardly to calculate odds. Besides, his superior strength wasn't his power, it was his physiology; no injection would take that away, so he still had a leg up on these presumably human opponents. As the men advanced, he staggered to his feet, hands curling into fists, and hurled himself at them.

It was over in moments. When he thought about it later, it couldn't have been any other way: there were four of them and one of him; they had weapons and he did not; and most importantly of all, he was compromised physically, perhaps more than he'd initially thought. But as he was muscled to the ground by three of the men, the impact of their blows still stinging on his burned chest and arms, he still struggled right up to the moment that the fourth sank the syringe _into the skin of his gills_.

It was pain like Kaldur had not known in a long, long time, and the scream ripped from his throat unbidden. Right at that instant, the guards seemed to stiffen and back off, and when Kaldur looked up through his rapidly blurring vision, he saw Manta standing in the doorway. That was the last thing he saw before his head dropped back to the cold concrete floor and he fell unconscious.

When he awoke, it was to the feeling of something soft and cold on his neck, and a partial numbness through the rest of him that was refreshing after all the pain he had been in before. It was dark, finally, and someone was pressing something to the top of his left hand.

"Good afternoon, Kaldur'ahm," said Manta's voice, and when Kaldur opened his eyes, he saw that the man was seated at his bedside. "I must apologize for my men. They could not know of your…sensitivity, but there was no need for such violence."

Kaldur coughed, then winced as the action strained his already aching chest and throat.

"What are you doing?" he asked, staring at the small metal device Manta was running over the back of his hand, over the head of the eel-shaped mark that ended there.

"Studying your tattoos," Manta replied. "I am…fascinated by them. By you, in general. You are physiologically unique, Kaldur. I hope you'll let us run a few tests to study you in greater depth."

"I doubt I will have a choice in the matter," said Kaldur flatly. "But my physiology is comparable to that of any Atlantean. It is hardly unique. Surely you have run your tests on some other victim. I know of your history."

Manta chuckled, pulling his hand back and setting the device down.

"Really, it amazes me that you've never figured it out before now," he said. "But I suppose it's always been the case that humans will see what they want to see and ignore the rest."

"You talk in riddles, Manta," Kaldur said, frowning. "I am growing tired of it."

"Have you never wondered about your _difference?"_

"I do not know what you mean."

"I think you do, Kaldur," Manta chided, giving him a look. "Your gills. The color of your skin. The visibility of your tattoos. You have never been like those around you – I'm certain this has occurred to you before."

"Atlantis is home to many kinds of people," Kaldur replied evenly. "I may appear different from some, but that is inevitability, not anomaly. I have never pondered it."

That wasn't quite true – while all Atlanteans could breathe underwater, he had never seen another fully humanoid being with gills like his, and few others had skin as dark as his own. He had been a little different, all his life, but it had never bothered him too much; other things had set him apart from others far more than any superficial difference – in Atlantis, he had endured more teasing for the absence of his parents than for his gills, and on land, people usually laughed at his odd mannerisms, his inability to completely assimilate to Earth culture, more than the strange marks on his arms and chest.

"What do you remember of your mother?" Manta asked, leaning back in his chair to watch Kaldur struggle for an answer.

"Little," Kaldur replied with a frown. "She was killed in an explosion when I was very young."

Manta gave a humorless smile.

"Ah, yes. That would have been what they told you, wouldn't it?"

"She attempted sorcery beyond her skill. The spell backfired and destroyed her," Kaldur insisted. "I saw the ruins of our home myself. The damage bore the mark of powerful mystic arts."

"Your mother was indeed a powerful sorceress," Manta agreed. "But all you know for yourself is that magic destroyed her. What makes you so sure it was hers?"

"Because I believe the word of my king," Kaldur said, his voice harder. "And if you think I will take yours above it, you are mistaken."

"Orin had good intentions in hiding the truth from you," said Manta. "He saw your potential. If you had even a fraction of your mother's powers…he would need you on his side. By his side. And though you may not have discovered its full potential yet, you do have her gift, Kaldur."

Manta's face suddenly seemed to break for a moment, a pained sadness softening his whole appearance.

"You have her eyes, too," the man whispered.

Kaldur stared at Manta, gears turning in his head as he watched his king's greatest enemy regain his composure, straighten in his chair, look back at him.

"You knew my mother," said Kaldur slowly.

"Yes," Manta replied, nodding. The softness was gone now, replaced by his usual unreadable façade. "I knew your mother. And you deserve the truth about her, Kaldur'ahm. Your mother did not destroy yourself with a spell. Rather, she was killed by another's, ambushed in her home by a squadron of the King's own men, put to death for harboring an enemy of the kingdom."

"You," Kaldur said flatly, connecting the dots.

"Me," Manta agreed.

"My mother was loyal to the king," said Kaldur, his eyes flaring as he struggled upright off the bed. This was ridiculous. It couldn't be true. "She would never have hidden you from him."

"But she would, and she did," said Manta evenly. "I had not come to do harm. I had only come to see her. And to see you."

Kaldur glared back. Somewhere in his mind, he knew where this was going, yet he couldn't believe it. It couldn't be true. Manta had to be lying.

"Why?" he asked. "Why risk your life to see _me_?"

"Because you are my son."

It must have been an age that Kaldur sat there, staring at the man before him, blood pounding in his ears. He wanted to throw himself upon the other, to strike him to the ground and hurt him until he stopped moving, stopped talking, stopped lying. He wanted to scream. He wanted to kill whoever had put him in the path to be burdened with this knowledge.

"You're lying," he managed to grit out at last.

"Look at me, Kaldur'ahm," Manta said, shaking his head slowly. Kaldur did, grey eyes boring into Manta's brown, jaw clenched tight. "You know it to be true."

And even through hatred was coursing through his veins a mile a minute, even though he would have given anything to claim it were false, he did know it. Manta's face was but a harder, older, more weathered version of the one that stared back at him out of the mirror, out of the glass of the Bioship's cockpit, out of the calm water of the tank in his land home.

He was Black Manta's son.

He was the flesh and blood of his king's deadliest enemy.

Here was the reason for so many unexplained things that Kaldur had never realized had ached until now. For Orin's distance – not until he had helped his king defeat the Ocean Master had his own loyalty been assured; only then had his king shown any warmth or trust towards him, after an entire lonesome childhood lived in the royal city. For his own strangeness – not an Atlantean, not a human, but something in-between; a freak who would never truly belong to either world. And most of all, for his loneliness – surely others who had lived through the earlier days of Manta's terror would have guessed the true story behind the mysterious orphan child who lived at the Academy. And who would have let their children play with the son of a murderer…?

"I will leave you to your thoughts," Manta said, rising and making as if to leave. Kaldur sat up a little straighter, hesitating just a second before he opened his mouth.

"W-wait."

Manta turned back.

"Why tell me this? Why now?"

The smile on Manta's face was still grim, but it was gentler this time, less knowing, more feeling.

"Because I have been watching you lately, Kaldur," he said. "And you need a father."


	6. Six

"How is that possible?" Robin demanded, glaring daggers at Black Canary from behind his mask. "It's been three days and you're telling us you've got _no_ idea where he is?"

"It's a League matter now," Canary replied firmly, ignoring the Boy Wonder's fuming. "We'll keep you updated but you are not, under any circumstances, to involve yourselves."

The group shifted moodily – Superboy folded his arms across his chest; Wally shuffled his feet while M'gann cast her gaze to the door, as if expecting Kaldur might walk in any moment.

"We're already involved," Artemis argued. "He's our leader. You can't expect us to just _sit_ here when he's gone missing."

"I can, actually," said Canary flatly. "There is a fair chance that he's completely fine. Aquaman has informed us that Aqualad used to disappear like this when he was younger, when he was in need of some time to himself. It's not out of character. And from what Batman told me of your last mission, I wouldn't blame him for taking some time to cool off. "

"But he would have told us," Robin objected. "Even if he was going to do that, it's not like Kaldur at all to leave without a word."

"Yeah, that's _your_ gig," muttered Wally, earning a smack from Artemis.

Canary sighed, hesitating a moment before she nodded.

"His failure to check in does…concern us. But if he is indeed in danger, then the League isn't about to risk the rest of your lives to remedy that. We'll take care of it. You're going to have to trust us."

"It's our job to risk our lives," Robin shot back. "At least let us help look for him."

Canary gave him a look and shook her head.

"You're leaderless and down a man. You are in no shape to be poking into a potentially dangerous situation. This is not up for debate."

"They're not down a man," said a new voice, and the team turned in surprise to see Red Arrow walking into the room, fully costumed, bow in hand.

"Roy!" Wally exclaimed, straightening out from his slouch. "What are you doing here?"

"I heard you lost Kaldur," the archer replied distastefully. "If you're going to listen to what all the _grown-ups_ are telling you to do, then I'll leave you to your playtime and go hunt him down myself. But if you're hero enough to give a shit about one of your own, then let's stop talking and get moving. We don't have time to waste."

Robin's eyes flicked to Black Canary, who was looking the team over with the faintest hint of a smile on her face. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then turned away with a dismissive wave of her hand.

"What you do in your spare time is none of my business."

* * *

><p>Kaldur was unsure how much time had passed since he'd come to this place. The days bled into each other; rarely did he find himself anywhere with enough of a view of the outside world to gauge if it was night or day, and the heavy fog in his mind, coupled with his own heavy thoughts, made it difficult to keep track of it all. It didn't seem to matter, anyway. Clearly Manta had found a place off the grid, or someone would have come for him by now. But the complex was silent, full of locked doors and sealed corridors but empty, it seemed, of life. Yet Kaldur was also quite aware that there were people enough somewhere close; someone had to be making the meals that he ate, preparing the injections they gave him each morning, analyzing the results of the tests they ran on him periodically.<p>

The experiments themselves were harmless enough. They'd taken a small blood sample for the first, with his consent; Manta himself had slid the needle into his arm to collect it. He wasn't sure why he'd agreed to all of it without so much as an explanation, and in some ways, it felt traitorous, to let these people examine his body this way, but he was tired, his mind was tired, and he didn't have it in him to object. Also, from that first attempt at a fight, he knew that the guards were ever close, and it seemed a waste of his energy to throw himself into a losing battle.

Next they'd taken small samples of his natural skin, his tattooed skin, and the skin of the webbing on his hands and feet. Manta had explained to him as a team of two silent scientists had gently scraped the relevant material into Petri dishes, that because he was only half Atlanean, and in actuality half human as well, that his physiological make-up would probably differ from that of both.

"You are truly a unique creature, Kaldur," he'd told him, pressing a small adhesive bandage over one of the sample locations.

Between tests, Kaldur had a lot of time to think. He did not doubt the truth of Manta's words about his origins, though he did yet question the man's motivations in sharing them with him. Manta had a way of keeping aloof while somehow exuding a warmth Kaldur hadn't felt in a long time; Manta was the one to bring him food, to talk to him through the long hours of nothingness in his room, to question him about his life both in Atlantis and on earth, past and current. It was a strange juxtaposition to think that this man, who showed him such concern, almost kindness, who seemed to keep watch over him every waking hour, was the same one who had attacked the capital, planted bombs that had taken civilians lives, nearly killed Tula and Mera, and the heir with them.

For the most part, he kept his lips sealed to Manta's questions, however much he missed anyone taking a genuine interest in his life. Even through the thick mental haze that had marked his time in this place, he still held firmly to the knowledge of the man's true nature, of his villainous history. Manta could not be trusted. He couldn't risk telling him anything that could be used against his team.

And yet, every so often, he found himself slipping, speaking with accidental honesty that he didn't notice until after the fact. One time he had confessed to Manta that his Atlanean heritage made him feel like an outsider on his team; coming from a much more formal culture than land-Earth's had made him seem cold to them, and though he wished he could show them that this was not true, that he did wish to be their friend, he feared they had already formed bonds with each other with which he couldn't hope to compete.

Another time, it had slipped out that his time away from Atlantis had managed to make him an outsider there, too. He'd used no names, but he'd let drop that his few friends had moved on in his absence, that he was a stranger to them now just as he was a stranger to his own team. That he felt had no home at all now.

"With an heir to the throne on the way, I imagine Orin is keeping busy as well," Manta had said. And Kaldur had been unable to deny it. All hope he'd once secretly held of being something of a son to his king had faded when he'd realized the king would have a child – a _real _child – soon enough. It hadn't even occurred to him to ask how Manta even knew that Mera was pregnant.

The source of his excessive talkativeness that particular day had been a test that had put him back in the water for the first time since that fateful swim off the shore of Mount Justice. Manta had said he wanted to see how his movements compared with that of a human swimmer, to see what made him so much faster and more agile in the water besides his Atlantean build and his webbed hands and feet, so they'd attached sensors to his shoulders, his elbows, his wrists, just about every relevant joint on his body, then brought him to a room he hadn't seen yet, one that had always been locked before. There was a pool. Not a deep one, but a pool nonetheless, and he'd almost cried in relief. It had been so long since he'd seen water outside of a cup.

Though his powers were still suppressed, the flow of the water over his skin felt unbelievably soothing as he slid into the pool and fully immersed himself. To Kaldur, water was more than a medium for sorcery; it was his home and his natural habitat, and to be reunited with it was to escape a dark, cramped space and run out in the open. It was liberating. He kicked off immediately, gliding through the water without so much as a splash, and immediately he felt the hum of the sensors all over his body respond. But his mind was not on the test, or on Manta, or on his predicament; for the first time since his capture (rescue?), his mind was blank and calm. The water was all that mattered.

He'd dreamed that night of Atlantis. Yet it was an empty place in his mind, silent and ghostly; the people were gone from it, leaving him to swim through the abandoned houses and markets and the royal court alone. There was peace in that solitude, but it was the wrong kind of peace. It was haunting. When he awoke, though, Manta was there, seated on a chair across from his bed.

"Good morning, Kaldur," he said, watching the young Atlantean sit up and rub his eyes. "I have a proposal to make to you."

"Then make it."

Kaldur was still confused from his dream, left with this lingering sense of loneliness. In some ways, he wished Manta had not disturbed him, for he had wanted more time to ponder the meaning of the vision. But in others, he was grateful not to wake up alone.

"I have your daily injection here," said Manta, patting his right breast pocket; Kaldur could see the head of the syringe protruding from it. "But I am curious to observe your powers in action. I would like to know what's happening neurologically when you activate those tattoos of yours."

"And?" Kaldur said, trying to keep his expression neutral. He had been operating in this strange mental state for so long now that he'd almost forgotten what it was like to have a clear head.

"I think we have established a degree of trust at this point," said Manta, watching him carefully. "I hope you have figured out that I have no desire to hurt you, whatever my history with Orin may be. You are distinct from him. And if this is true, I would hope you'd extend the same courtesy to me. If I reallow you the use of your powers, I would expect you not to betray my trust. Can I trust you, Kaldur?"

Kaldur kept still a moment, thinking deeply. He was an honest person by nature. He had no desire to lie, not even to someone like Manta. Yet he found that he could not give an honest answer, not as addled as he had been of late, and slowly, it dawned on him that the only way to get any real clarity about the matter was to accept the offer. When he was in possession of his mind again, he would know.

He nodded.

"Good," said Manta, rising from his seat. "The effects should wear off within eight hours. I will see you in the laboratory then."


	7. Seven

"You're sure this is it?" Wally asked skeptically, hesitating as he looked up at the building before them.

Roy strode forward, looking almost more intimidating in his civilian clothes than he did in costume. Since they had decided that a full-scale team visit to Kaldur's apartment would look too conspicuous and probably draw unwanted attention, they were all there in civvies.

"I'm sure," Roy replied, starting up the stairs without a backwards glance. "I've been here before."

"When?" muttered Wally. Who knew Kaldur lived in such a…well, a boring place? It was just a big concrete apartment building. Sure, it was on the harbor, but somehow he'd expected the protégé of the King of Atlantis to live somewhere with a bit more…well, swag.

"Why doesn't Kaldur live in Atlantis?" M'gann asked curiously as they followed Roy up and into the building. "Robin, Wally, Artemis, you all go back and forth between the Cave and your home cities. Why wouldn't he do the same?"

"Beats me," Wally shrugged. The place was clean and well-kept, but it felt empty; the doors were all unmarked, and not a sound came from any of them.

Robin shrugged as M'gann cast a glance his way. He didn't know either.

"Orin wanted him to learn land customs," Roy answered as he opened the door to the stairwell and led the way. "He got him the flat so he wouldn't be splitting his time between worlds. Fourth floor."

"I guess that makes sense," M'gann murmured. But it didn't, not entirely; why get him a separate home, when he could have lived in the Cave just as easily? Maybe Orin had thought that living with two aliens wouldn't have helped him learn to assimilate to Earth's culture. But at least it would have been less lonely. M'gann's empathic abilities were picking up pretty much nothing as they made their way up the stairs through the heart of the building – this was a place where people came and went without really seeing each other.

"Here," said Roy, as they reached the landing to the fourth floor. "Third door on the left, Robin."

The Boy Wonder nodded and poked his head out into the hallway, checking to see if anyone was there to witness them; this wasn't the sort of place to have security cameras. When he was sure the place was empty, he walked quickly to the door and slipped something from his sleeve, inserting it into the lock and giving it a few expert tweaks. There was a click, then the door swung open. The six of them crowded inside.

"Well this is kind of…Spartan," said Wally, breaking the silence as the team looked around the flat.

It was true; you could see just about all there was to see from the entryway. A small kitchen area, with a single chair at a little square table; the other side of the room was carpeted, an old-looking armchair placed next to a bookcase jam-packed with volumes of varying sizes, most in a language Wally didn't recognize but presumed was Atlantean. There was a closed door in the corner that Wally took to be the bathroom, and an open one that led to the bedroom. From where he stood, he could see through the bedroom window; it was a small, rectangular thing with a distant view of the harbor.

"Yeah well, not everyone lives large," said Artemis, walking over to the bookcase to examine the titles.

"Everything's so neat," Robin marveled as he opened one of the kitchen cupboards. "Who knew Kaldur kept house this well?"

"I don't think he has much to keep tidy," M'gann pointed out. It was a small apartment, largely unfurnished, and he seemed to have more books than he had anything else.

"When you're done speculating about Kaldur's housekeeping habits, you might consider drawing conclusions from all this," said Roy impatiently. "Everything is perfectly put away. No sign of a struggle. If someone kidnapped him, they didn't do it here."

"Or they put everything back," Wally argued, arms folded over his chest.

"Don't be an idiot," Roy snapped. "If that were the case, the…"

"What _is _this?" Conner asked from the bedroom. The team moved to join him. He stood before a shallow glass tank, perhaps three feet deep, filled with water that rippled gently as it replenished itself through a pipe that disappeared into the nearest wall.

"A bed," said Roy flatly.

"Looks more like a coffin," commented Robin with an uneasy laugh. The dimensions were pretty similar. Still, though, hadn't occurred to him that Kaldur would want to sleep in the water. On second thought, he realized he'd never actually seen their leader sleep…

"Look," said M'gann, stepping up to the outside wall. The team crowded around, all except Roy, who was looking out the window with a furrowed brow.

Tacked to the plain white wall, the only decoration in the entire place, were several pictures. One was a portrait of Orin and Mera, the king and queen looking resplendent in formal Atlantean garb, radiating wisdom and surety in the artist's depiction. Another was a candid photograph of two Atlantean youths, a boy with shoulder-length dark hair and a girl with alarmingly large, beautiful eyes, the two with their arms around each other. A smaller, blurrier photograph depicted a young Atlantean woman whose own eyes were the same clear grey as Kaldur's, her gaze equally commanding despite the age of the picture.

But in the center of all of these were photographs, some in groups, some individually, of all of them. Robin, perched atop a Gotham skyscraper, the picture clipped carefully from a newspaper. M'gann attempting to force-feed Conner cookies while Wally stole the rest from under them both. Artemis on her first day of school, looking uncomfortable in the new uniforn. Roy as Speedy, with KF and Robin at some kind of publicity event. Roy as Red Arrow, glaring at the camera as he stood over a couple of trussed-up criminals. M'gann fussing over a disgruntled-looking Artemis as the latter had her ankle bandaged up in the infirmary. Conner, looking bewildered as Wally and Robin attempted to teach him to play video games.

"I remember that," said Robin, grinning a little and glancing over at Conner, who smiled back.

"I…didn't think he cared that much," said Wally, blinking in surprise as he looked it all over.

"You don't think," Roy corrected harshly.

Wally opened his mouth to shoot something back when suddenly, there was a noise at the door – the sound of a key sliding into a lock. In a split second, the team disbanded. An ordinary group of trespassing teenagers would have had no place to go, but compact grappling hooks appeared from jacket pockets, arms slid around less prepared companion's shoulders, and in moments, the breeze coming in from the open window was all that was left to say anyone had been there. That, and the camouflaged presence of a certain Martian, who floated into the upper corner of the bedroom, waiting to see who the new intruder was.

The door swung open. M'gann held her breath, linking the rest of the team to her mind so they could see through her eyes – if the newcomer was the kidnapper, this was about to become a fight….

But it was Orin, strange and stiff-looking in civilian clothes as he stepped into his protégé's apartment and cast a long look around. Still frozen in the corner, M'gann watched as the king moved slowly around the flat, his eyes restless as if hungry for some clue. He pulled a few books from the shelf and scanned their titles, then shook his head as if to rid himself of some unwanted memory and moved away. For a moment, M'gann wondered if she should read his mind, to determine why he was there, but it felt wrong – Aquaman was a member of the Justice League, practically Kaldur's father. It would have been invasive and rude.

As Orin moved through the apartment, finally winding up in the bedroom to stand only a few feet from where M'gann hovered, he seemed to grow more and more distracted. He stood before the pictures on the wall and slowly reached out to touch a few of them, his expression growing pained, then suddenly, as the whole team watched, he sank to his knees and pressed shaking hands to the wall and _wept_.

None of them had ever seen any their mentors as vulnerable as this, and almost instantly, M'gann cut the mind-link between them. It was bad enough that she was witnessing this – the subtle shake of the man's powerful shoulders, the anger and helplessness in his expression, the _humanness_ of this moment. The others did not need to see. The moment passed, and Orin at last rose, fists clenched at his side, then cast a final glance at the photos on the wall and left the whole place, but the team lingered a moment, the shock of it still traveling through them.

_Oh man, _said Wally through the reestablished mind-link, sounding shaken even in his own head. _We have __**got**__ to get him back._


	8. Eight

"How are you feeling?" Manta asked, rising as Kaldur stepped into the main laboratory.

Kaldur flexed his webbed fingers and rolled his neck, as if to test his body.

"Like myself," he replied at last.

The fog had lifted. His head was clear, and had been now for a few hours – his body had rid itself of the power-dulling chemical sooner than Manta had anticipated, but he had used the extra time for some much-needed thought. For the first time since even before he'd been brought to this place, he was sure of himself.

"Good," Manta smiled. "I thought we'd start small. If you'd come here for a moment…"

He led Kaldur to the front of one of the many humming machines in the room, reaching out to tap the screen to life. As he did so, a man and a woman appeared out of a back door, both in lab coats; one carried a clipboard, while the other had a small briefcase. Manta gestured them forward and they approached silently, the man setting the case down on an empty table and opening it. Inside was a collection of tight wire coils and metal-studded plastic discs.

"Have a seat," Manta said, gesturing to a padded metal chair. Kaldur obeyed.

Silently and methodically, the two scientists removed the contents of the case and began to connect the wires, forming a sort of system of loops that met every so often at one of the discs. The end of the wire protruded from the rest, and fed into a tube in the side of the machine where it was cinched in.

"I invented this system myself," said Manta as he watched them work, one hand on Kaldur's shoulder. A few days ago Kaldur would have protested the casual contact, but it was somehow normal now, almost welcome. Everything else was so unfamiliar.

"Hold out your hand, please," said the female scientist, and Kaldur complied. She fastened a small metal loop around his wrist.

"To monitor your normal vital functions," Manta explained. Kaldur had never seen a monitor like that, but he did not protest, and soon they had fitted the contraption over his head, the discs pressing into his scalp while the rest of them trailed down across the back of his neck and over his arms, flowing along the lines of his tattoos.

Manta turned to the screen then and typed something onto the keyboard connected to it. Turning back to Kaldur, he performed a final check on the wires, then nodded to the male scientist, who pulled a glass cylinder from a side compartment of the briefcase. It was filled with water.

It would not be enough. He needed to wait, until he could be sure the advantage was his.

"Now, Kaldur," Manta said, pouring the contents of the cylinder into a basin, which he set on a table in front of the young Atlantean. "I realize you usually channel your powers through those weapons you carry, but I'm afraid they were destroyed when you swam into the minefield. Can you work without them?"

"Yes," Kaldur said, his eyes on the water in the basin. Already, he could feel his fingertips tingling with anticipation. He had only been cut off a few days, but it felt like ages, and his very body could not wait to work with his element again.

"Good," said Manta with a nod. He set the empty cylinder down beside the basin and stepped back. "Move the water back into its original container when I give you the signal."

He turned back to the machine and flipped a few switches. Kaldur felt the contraption affixed to his head hum to life, and the band around his wrist grew slightly warm.

"Any time you're ready."

He stretched his hand out eagerly, feeling the light spreading through his tattoos like cool fire running down his arms, and the water rose at his invitation, the individual droplets rushing towards his outstretched fingertips. He let them brush his hand on its way to the cylinder, leaving his skin glistening and damp, but the rest cascaded into the glass container, leaving the basin bone dry.

"Very good," said Manta, watching the screen – Kaldur could see some sort of fluctuating diagram from where he sat; presumably, it was measuring his brain activity. "Interesting. Do it again."

As Kaldur obeyed, moving the water back and forth between the two containers, the two scientists retreated back into the other room and emerged a moment later carrying a larger bin between the two of them, filled to the brim with water. Keeping his face calculatedly calm, Kaldur continued the exercise before him, but already his mind was taking stock of the room, of the tools at his disposal, of the odds.

Manta gestured for him to stop and he did, the water pouring out into the basin one last time. Then the scientists brought forth the larger container and set it in front of him.

"Ready for something a little more challenging?"

Kaldur nodded.

"I want to see more control this time. Make a construct for me. I saw you do it in Atlantis, and in Rhelasia."

"You saw Rhelasia?" Kaldur frowned suddenly. How long had Manta been tracking his movements?

"Don't be stupid, Kaldur, the world saw Rhelasia," Manta reprimanded. "You and your archer friend put on a show in front of international television cameras. I saw that creature you created. That was powerful magic. Show me a little of that now."

Kaldur nodded. This time he reached out both hands, summoning his focus and his strength as he pulled the water up towards him, letting it hover in the air. It was still not a lot – perhaps only a dozen gallons or so – but he let his mind shape it, the mass changing fluidly in the air. First it was a rearing horse, flecks of its mane leaping off its shape and turning to mist, then it was a swooping bird, carving elegant patterns in the air as it circled around the high laboratory ceiling. As Manta watched, keeping one eye on the violently flickering screen that was monitoring Kaldur's brain activity, he seemed to grow more and more satisfied, a broad smile making its way across his face.

"Kaldur," he said, his voice low and warm with excitement. "You have your mother's gift. We could do such things together…such great things …"

Kaldur hesitated a moment, watching this man – his father – as he let the water coil into a great snake and hover above his shoulders.

This had gone far enough.

"No," he said simply.

Manta looked up, brow furrowing.

"Kaldur'ahm," he warned. "What are you saying?"

"I will not ally myself with you."

Kaldur's voice was firm and quiet, his expression equally cool.

"You are my son," Manta said, gesturing to Kaldur as if he himself was some item in a proof. "You and I are connected, whether you like or not. I am offering you a chance to come back and be where you belong. With me. With your family."

Kaldur closed his eyes briefly. He had thought of this. He had predicted Manta would say those words that would make him doubt himself – _family, belong._ But he was prepared. There were things here at stake bigger than his own happiness. He looked back up at Manta and shook his head once.

"Your blood may run through my veins, but I am not like you," he said quietly. "I will never be like you. You are a murderer and an assassin and a terrorist, Black Manta, and I have sworn my life to fighting your ilk. As a citizen of Atlantis – Atlantis _and _Earth – I stand against you, and always will."

"Don't be a fool," Manta said, his face beginning to show some irritation. "You are letting politics and propaganda dictate your thinking. Ask yourself honestly, where would you rather be? Back with your team, who knows nothing of you or your past, and cares little whether you live or die? Or here with me?"

"You have been kind to me here," Kaldur admitted. "I do not wish to bring violence upon you, or your men and women. But if you do not let me return to my team and my home, I will not hold back."

"Consider what you're doing, Kaldur."

"I have."

"Then you leave me no choice."

Manta's face was grim as he reached for the communicator at his belt, but Kaldur was quicker, twisting his hands and sending the water construct flying at the older man. Manta went crashing back into the machine with a shout of pain, and the communicator went skidding across the floor, out of his reach. As the scientists rushed forward, Kaldur turned to grip the edge of the nearest table and flipped it forcefully at them, the cylinder and the basin shattering to pieces and forcing the humans to drop to the ground to cover themselves; for a moment it looked like that was going to be the end of it, then Manta slammed his fist onto a large button on the side of his machine.

Pain exploded up through Kaldur's left wrist, where the "monitor" was located. Suppressing a cry, Kaldur tried to keep his focus but lost control of his construct; it rained to the concrete floor and began to drip through a drain there, useless to him now. The metal on his wrist had suddenly become unbearably hot, and though within seconds he had crushed the thing and thrown it off himself, ripping off the rest of the wires as he did so, a dark welt was already forming on the skin where it had been, and worse, the sensation had begun to crawl up his arm – a horrible, intense heat, a burning, prickling pain that rendered movement impossible wherever it came.

Down to one arm, Kaldur rushed forward as Manta made another attempt for the machine. As his uninjured hand closed around Manta's collar, dragging him upright, he summoned what he could salvage from the water on the floor and brought it cascading over the machine, which sputtered and went dark. But suddenly, Manta seized his injured arm, digging strong fingers into the oversensitive flesh and raking his fingernails across the mark from the metal device. The flow of the pain increased exponentially, coursing up his arm and through his shoulder, and when it rushed up into his neck to the flesh around his gills, Kaldur couldn't take it. With a hoarse scream, he fell to his knees as stars danced before his eyes.

"What…have you done to me?" he gasped out. It was like fire, blazing across his body, spreading as a flame devours anything in its path.

Manta panted slightly, struggling to his own feet as he picked up his communicator.

"I took a few precautions."

As the guards stormed the room, Manta shook his head as if disappointed by the whole thing. He watched as the guards held Kaldur steady and one of the scientists pressed the syringe to his neck with shaking hands, then sighed and turned away.

"I had such high hopes for you," he said, casting a glance back down at his half-conscious son. "I am sorry I could not be more…present to you, earlier in your life. Perhaps then this could all have been averted. But you will still be useful to me, Kaldur. I still have much to learn from you."

Kaldur attempted to respond, but he was overwhelmed by pain and a sudden, intense fatigue that seemed to have been brought on by the injection. Only a faint noise of protest escaped his lips as the guards picked him up and carried him out of the room.

Manta frowned as he watched them go, then turned to his two scientists.

"Prepare Laboratory 5," he ordered. "We can start the real tests now."


	9. Nine

"Dammit," Robin swore, uncharacteristically frustrated as he slammed his fist down on the side of the Cave's computer terminal. Roy stopped pacing behind him to look over at the screen, then gritted his teeth and shook his head.

Frowning, Artemis walked over to look over Robin's shoulder.

"Still nothing?"

The Boy Wonder had a huge array of windows open, mostly full of information and dialogue boxes she didn't understand, but whatever he had attempted, it seemed it hadn't worked.

"Nothing," Robin confirmed. "I tried re-activating his GPS through a remote emergency channel, but it's like it just doesn't exist anymore. He didn't just take it off. It's gone."

"What does that mean?" asked M'gann, drifting in. Conner followed her into the room, silent and sullen as always.

Robin swiveled in his chair to face the rest of them (Wally was splayed out on the couch, pretending not to pay attention).

"It means one of two things," he said, tapping his hand against the armrest incessantly, as if it would help him think. "If Kal's disappeared because he wants to disappear, it means he really doesn't want us to find him. Ever."

"He wouldn't," said Conner flatly.

"I don't think so either, but we can't rule out the possibility," Robin continued. "Let's be honest. We were pretty harsh on him after that last mission, and I doubt Batman was any nicer."

"Nice that you can finally admit it," muttered Artemis.

"What's the other option?" Wally asked with a yawn, munching on an energy bar from the couch.

"If he's been kidnapped, it means that whoever kidnapped him knows what Justice League GPS trackers look like and how to remove and destroy them," Robin replied evenly. "Which means we're talking League enemy. Someone with the technology or the force to accomplish all that has to be in the big leagues."

"As though Kaldur would be kidnapped by some small-time criminal," Roy scoffed. "He's a damn superhero. He wouldn't let himself be taken by just anyone."

"I'm just saying that he…" Robin began, but trailed off as the zeta-tube transporter suddenly lit up, and the computer announced:

_Recognized. Garth, Aquaman exception E-02._

* * *

><p>Kaldur lay on his side on the concrete floor of the laboratory floor, breath barely passing between his cracked lips. A few figures were standing above them, but he seemed completely unaware of them, his eyes glassy and only half-open.<p>

"The diuretic worked more quickly on full-blooded Atlanteans, sir," said a voice from above as someone knelt to feel his bone-dry wrist for a pulse. "But I believe it has taken its full effect now. Shall we run statistics on the data?"

"Yes. Is he awake?"

"I don't think…oh. Yes, sir," said the voice in surprise. "Surprising resilience, given his state. He should be close to death at this level of dehydration."

Manta gave a short noise of amusement.

"Hybrid vigor, I suppose."

* * *

><p>As the team watched, a young man stepped uncertainly out of the transporter and into the Cave, looking around at them as he held something close to his chest. He was barefoot, dressed in strange-looking garb, and bore a very serious expression not unlike Kaldur's usual solemn look, though there was something less calm about him, perhaps because he had just transported into a room full of strangers who were all staring at him.<p>

Robin eyed him suspiciously. Any intruder should be regarded as a potential threat. But if Aquaman had added him as an exception to the transporter constrictions, he had to be an ally of some kind. And following that train of thought, if he had come from Atlantis, perhaps he had some information from them…

"I have need speak to Aquaman," the young man – Garth – said in halting, broken English. "Imp…important."

"Aquaman is on a League mission," Robin replied, rising to stand with his arms crossed before the newcomer. "You're going to have to wait until it's done. Is it about Kaldur? You can talk to us about it. We're his teammates."

Garth looked confused and frustrated, watching Robin's lips move intently but clearly unable to decipher any real meaning from what he was saying.

"Kaldur," he repeated, nodding, but frowning hopelessly at the rest.

Wally had gotten up at the new arrival and now came to stand beside Robin.

"Aquaman – not – here," he said, loudly and slowly, as though speaking to a very small child. He acted out each word with his body as he went, his tone impatient. "Talk – to – us – about – "

"_El-an me'alkor unim erkahn__è__d balthus Kaldur'ahm?" _Conner interrupted, pushing past Wally to address Garth.

"_O'ond,", _the Atlantean replied, looking relieved. "_Fihdalloren mi'oland antolv__è__ Kaldur'ahm, endun ah'irchel d'bailar m__ë__det quintd'avelt. Annex Orin tu'valdor en me'alkor." _

The team turned as one to stare at Superboy.

"You speak Atlantean?" asked Wally incredulously.

"Cadmus taught me much," Conner replied, shrugging. "This is Garth. He's Kaldur's friend from Atlantis. He says he has to speak to Aquaman. It's urgent, and it's about Kaldur. He thinks he's in danger."

"Duh," said Wally, though even he was beginning to look uncomfortable. "We could have told him as much."

"Ask him what he's found out," Roy urged Conner, ignoring Wally. "Tell him we're Kaldur's teammates."

"You're not," Wally pointed out, then yelped when Artemis hit him.

As the two bickered, Conner turned back to Garth and asked him something in Atlantean. Garth nodded in response, then opened his hands to show Conner what he was holding. Roy and Robin had moved in close to watch the two of them talk. Neither could understand what was being said, but as Garth's hands unfolded, both let out a low breath.

"Is that…?" Robin asked, trailing off. A short tube of grey metal, hollow, and shattered on one end, its glimmering blue markings dulled beneath a sprinkling of mud and grime.

"Part of Kaldur's waterbearers," Roy nodded grimly. He turned to Conner. "Where did he find this?"

Conner translated the question and he and Garth spoke back and forth for a minute or so. Robin seemed particularly frustrated at his inability to follow what was going on, and stuffed his hands in his sweatshirt pockets as he listened for the odd word he could actually understand. Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, Garth reached into a pouch on his belt and withdrew several small pieces of shrapnel, jet black, with small red markings. Roy reached out to take one and studied it carefully, waiting for Conner and Garth to finish talking. At last, Conner turned back to his teammates and began to explain.

"He says he found all of this a few miles off the coast between here and Kaldur's land home," he began. Artemis, Wally and M'gann had crowded in to the circle by now, all listening to what the Boy of Steel had to say. "It was buried in the sand on the ocean floor. He said the landscape showed some kind of seismic activity, he thought an earthquake at first. Then he found those."

Conner gestured to the pieces Roy now held in his hands.

"A bomb," Robin deduced.

"Yes," Conner nodded. "He said he recognized it, too. He says a few months ago, Poseidonis was attacked by one of Aquaman's enemies, that the attacker detonated bombs there too. And he says the debris looked just like this."

"Black Manta," Robin said, suddenly looking grim. "This isn't good."

"Black who?" M'gann asked uncertainly.

"Aquaman's deadliest enemy," Robin said, shaking his head. "If he has Kaldur…he can only want one thing. We could already be too late."

* * *

><p>He was back in the tank, but it was all wrong. It was like suffocating underwater, a horrible blazing sensation in his lungs as the researchers stared through the glass at his twitching, jerking body. Had his hands been free, he would have clutched at his gills where the worst of the burning was, tried to close them off from the toxic fluid flowing into him, but they had bound his wrists and ankles tightly to the sides of the tank to ensure he would not smash through the glass and ruin the experiment.<p>

It was the third time they had done this trial, the third time they'd submerged him and pumped the water full of some chemical compound to see how much he could take, the third time they'd let it go on until his body had gone limp in the restraints and they'd whisked him off to the medical room to heal him in preparation for the next round.

As his vision blurred and he felt himself starting to slip back into unconsciousness, he thought he met Manta's eyes through the glass, and the man smiled a gentle, amused smile.

* * *

><p>"Can we try to contact Aquaman with the Cave systems?" M'gann asked. "I'm sure he'd…well, he'd want to know."<p>

There was a brief, uncomfortable pause as they all remembered what they had seen back in Kaldur's apartment. Finally, Robin nodded, heading for the terminal.

"It's against protocol, but I think Batman would want us to make an exception."

That seemed to justify it for everyone, and Robin slid into his chair at the computer terminal once more, typing out the League contact sequence that they had been warned so many times not to use lightly. A moment later, a video feed flickered to life, and it was the Flash standing before them, looking a little impatient and anxious. Behind him, the Beijing skyline blazed red.

"Hey guys. Can this wait? We're kind of busy," he said, glancing offscreen as a loud explosion sounded.

"Sorry, but no. We need to talk to Aquaman," Robin answered, shaking his head. "Right now. It's about Aqualad."

"He's ah…kind of…" Flash hesitated, still watching something going on outside their sight. But he glanced at their faces, and at the strange newcomer in the background, and relented. "Give me a second. I'll get him."

He zipped out of their line of vision. A moment later, Orin appeared before them, his uniform singed and his expression grave.

"What is it?" he asked quickly, then suddenly noticed the full group. "Garth! What news?"

Garth stepped forward and explained something in rapid Atlantean, holding out the broken waterbearer and the pieces of the bomb, which he had collected from Roy. As he spoke, Orin's expression grew darker and darker.

"Are you coming back, then?" Robin pressed when the two seemed to be done. "Kadur's in trouble. He needs you."

"I…" Orin hesitated, his expression truly pained. "I cannot. I am needed here. I must fulfill my duty to the League and the world, first. It is my sworn oath."

"Then we're going without you."

"I…I cannot allow that," said Orin, shaking his head. "It is too dangerous. If I allowed you to place yourselves in that kind of danger, your own mentors would never forgive me."

Roy snorted.

"With all due respect, King Orin, we can decide the risks for ourselves," said the archer. "Just tell us where to look."

Orin hesitated once more, glancing behind him to check on the status of the League's own fight. Then he turned back, sighed, and nodded.

"I have been keeping tabs on Black Manta for a little while," he admitted, typing something into a small device built into the wrist of his costume. "I didn't want to believe he was involved, he had been quiet so long. But I always suspected, I just lacked the evidence to connect him to Kaldur's disappearance. I am sending you the last coordinates I verified for his facilities."

"Received," Robin nodded, pulling them up on the screen. "We're on it. Team, gear up."

"Wait," Orin called out as they turned to go. "There is one more thing you need to know."

"What is it?" asked Robin.

"Black Manta…is Kaldur's father," said Orin gravely.

"What?" Roy demanded, stepping up to the screen. "Does he know this?"

Orin shook his head.

"I have kept the information from him all his life. I…had hoped I would never have reason to tell him. But if he truly has been taken by Black Manta, then I do not doubt that Manta already has."

"Understood," Robin nodded. "Anything else?"

"No," said Orin. "Just…please, be careful, all of you. Kaldur would not want any of you hurt on his account."

Something in the background exploded, and a siren began to wail in the distance. Orin glanced back, his expression hardening.

"I must go."

And they were left looking at static. Robin turned to the team.

"Suit up," he ordered. "We're on a rescue mission now."


	10. Ten

Kaldur heard his own voice screaming, calling out names and incomprehensible Atlantean phrases in a delirious blur, but it was as if his body were acting entirely of its own accord. He had not given it permission to scream, yet scream it did as Manta dragged a wide, flat blade across a marked portion of his chest, the man's hands steady to keep the pressure constant. The screen monitoring his brain activity pulsed blue on its black background, little areas of green blossoming and fading with each repetition of the knife's application.

"Fascinating," Manta said, stepping back to review the screen as one of the scientists stepped in to wipe the blood off Kaldur's skin with a clean cloth. "You have the dense skin of an Atlantean, yet the pain sensitivity of a human, according to your neural imaging. Did you never realize that you felt pain more acutely than any of your classmates at the Academy?"

Kaldur did not, could not respond, sagging in his bonds. He was on the brink of unconsciousness and desperate to cross it, but the pain was just enough to keep him awake and not enough to send him over the edge. Caught in a wordless haze of agony, he could only watch as Manta stepped up to run a hand over the wound in his chest as if testing for something. Of its own accord, his body flinched away.

"I bet you didn't," Manta speculated conversationally, pressing his thumb in a little harder. Kaldur groaned. "I bet you just kept your mouth shut like the good little soldier you are."

At last, Manta turned away, running his hands under a nearby tap to wash the blood of them.

"Process the results," he said to his chief scientist, turning to leave. "If we decide to incorporate the half-breed adaptations into the newest clone tech, we'll need to adjust this area. I don't want my soldiers feeling they're weaker than they are."

And he swept out, leaving Kaldur alone with the researchers. They would heal him, now. They always did. Just enough to keep him alive for the next round.

* * *

><p>"The coordinates Aquaman sent us are for an old warehouse off the Maine coast," Robin said, studying the hologram his glove was projecting before him. M'gann glanced over, but kept her eyes on the sky as she piloted the Bioship towards their destination. "Legally abandoned for four years, until a few months back, when a private contractor bought the deed and reportedly started cleaning the place up. Locals stay away from it, say it's pretty top-secret stuff, and well-guarded at the perimeter. I'm betting our best bet will be the roof."<p>

He enlarged the hologram so the others could see from their seats as Conner translated for Garth, who had flatly refused to be left behind. Robin wasn't thrilled about the prospect of working with someone who couldn't understand a word of his orders, but time had been of the essence, and the Atlantean had been uncompromising in his intent to come with them. And…well, if Kaldur was still alive when they got there, he would probably be glad for the familiar face.

"Once we're inside, we split up and look for Kaldur," said Robin, still studying the hologram. "This place is huge, so we'll need to be efficient. Superboy, take Garth. Red Arrow and Kid Flash, you're squad two. Artemis and Miss M will come with me."

There was a short, awkward moment. Robin was the natural choice for a leader in that moment, but the fact that it was his voice and not Kaldur's delivering their orders served as a painful reminder of the purpose of their mission. Finally, Artemis nodded, seeming to speak for everyone.

"Comm?"

"Use it," Robin replied. "Anyone who finds trouble, or Kaldur, lets everyone else know."

"Right."

If Roy objected to taking orders from someone five years his junior, he didn't show it. He was staring out the window as if willing the ship to go faster, clearly preoccupied with his own thoughts, but at Robin's words he turned slightly and gave a nod.

"One minute to arrival," Miss Martian announced.

"Good," said Robin. He closed the hologram off, checking his utility belt more out of habit than anything else. "Prepare to jump ship, everyone."

The team moved to the center of the Bioship, steadying themselves on each other as the ship navigated over the low terrain. M'gann, still seated in the pilot's seat, kept her eyes on the last tricky part of the flight.

"Switching to camouflage mode."

"Prepare to drop in 15…14…13…12…"

Out of the right-side window of the Bioship, the ocean shone brilliant blue in the late afternoon sun, and their target came into view, a stout grey building, about three stories high, seated at the top of a high cliff that plunged directly back into the rocky sea. The ship soared over the docks, skimmed the steep slope of the cliffside, zipped over the heads of the guards on the building perimeter, then pulled back sharply to hover over the building.

"…one."

As a hole opened up in the floor of the Bioship, the team leapt from it one after another in quick succession,_ Robin Conner Roy Artemis Wally Garth M'gann__, _rolling in opposite directions as they hit the roof with the exception of M'gann, who hovered over the rest of them to look out over the whole complex.

"All clear," she reported. Not a guard in sight. Roy and Artemis lowered their drawn bows; the light faded from Garth's skin as he let go of the spell he'd been preparing.

"Look for a hatch down," Robin ordered. "Someone will have noticed the noise. We need to get in quickly."

The team split instantly, circling across the rooftop to investigate its various bumps and indentation.

"Skylight," Artemis called a moment later from the west edge of the roof. "But it's a narrow one."

KF zipped over to check it out.

"Rob, you might fit through this," he said. "No one else."

"Found a hatch," Roy interrupted from the south side of the building. He knelt down to pull sharply on the handle, but it didn't budge. "It's locked. Superboy, get over here."

Robin looked briefly irritated that Roy had given an order that should have been his, but bounded across the rooftop to join them around the small rooftop panel. The team gathered as Superboy bent down and wrapped his hand around the thing.

Before he had a chance to pull, the hatch opened.

Gunfire exploded out of it, bullets zipping up out of the hole as several armed guards rushed up and at the young heroes.

"Get down!" Conner roared, throwing himself at the nearest black-masked goon and hurling the hapless man at the others – several tumbled back down the stairs below the hatch like pieces in a life-sized game of dominoes. A well-placed arrow from Roy knocked the gun out of the hands of another, Wally zipping in to kick it off the side of the building and into the ocean, and M'gann picked up another two telepathically and knocked them together in mid-air, stunning them. In moments, Robin and Artemis had them tied up, and then Roy was standing over them, posture imposing and intimidating.

"Where's Aqualad?" he demanded, grabbing one of the bound goons by the shirt, ripping off the man's mask and hauling him upright. "Where is your prisoner?"

"I…I don't know," the man gasped out, clearly terrified. "The boss doesn't tell us where…where he…"

"He's telling the truth," M'gann said quickly, taking her finger off her temple as the glow in her eyes died down. "He doesn't know. "

Roy made a noise of disgust and threw the goon back down.

"Move out," Robin ordered, hopping down into the hatch. "Soon as we're inside, we split up, as discussed."

* * *

><p>Kaldur opened his eyes wearily as he felt himself lowered into the tank once more. He tried to focus on the sensation of the water as it slipped up over his feet, his calves, his thighs, his hips, his chest…anything to keep from thinking of the sharp lingering pain that now constantly coursed through his body. There was only the water. He had to believe that for the moment, or he would break too soon.<p>

Just as the researchers activated the mechanical restraints that would hold his hands and feet to the sides of the tank, Manta entered the room. There was something different about him this time. He was dressed not in civilian clothes but in his underwater combat suit, all except the helmet, which he held under one arm. Kaldur watched him warily as he felt the metal close around his wrists and ankles, watched him step across the room to come right up to the tank so that he could hear him through the glass.

"You have proved invaluable to me, Kaldur'ahm," said Manta. "I've come to thank you for that, since it seems our time together is coming to an end."

Kaldur stared through dull eyes, his mind too numb to think too hard about what Manta could mean.

"I do regret the way things have turned out," the man continued, and there was a hint of sincerity in his voice. "I had hoped you would be more…open. More willing to see things for yourself. But I've observed you before, and I knew you were very loyal, so though I had my hopes, I had thought it might come to this, really. Still, this is a rather bittersweet ending for our time together. Not the one I would have chosen."

Manta pressed a hand to the glass, looking Kaldur over closely.

"You really do have your mother's eyes," he mused, then turned to go. "Goodbye, my son."

Kaldur shut his eyes, too tired to watch Manta go, or to register the fact that all the researchers had left the room, or to notice that they hadn't bothered to fit him with any sensors or monitors. He was only aware of a new sensation, a slight sense of heat, coming up from the floor of the tank.

* * *

><p>The team hurried after Robin's lead, down into the narrow stairwell into which the hatch had opened. As the few goons who had been knocked back into it made as if to open fire again, Wally zipped forward and bowled them all over, leaving them to the trampling feet of the rest of the team. At the first landing they came across a steel door that Robin tried to open, but not only was it locked, it had no electronic security for him to hack. It was like they had known he was coming. He looked to Superboy.<p>

Without a word, Conner made his way to the front of their line and wrenched the thing right off its hinges, setting it aside quietly, though after the racket the initial action had made, that seemed fairly pointless.

"KF, Red Arrow, this is your floor," Robin directed, and the two redheads nodded and disappeared into it together. "The rest of you, keep going."

The remaining five sprinted down, forced into single file by the narrowness of the passage. Somewhere between the third and second floors, a piercing alarm sounded, but no one so much as flinched; they just kept racing forward, more important things on their mind. _Find Kaldur_.

"Miss Martian, any chance you can locate him telepathically?" Robin asked as they reached the second landing, skidding to a halt. _Dammit._ He should have thought of that sooner, but he was used to playing to his own strengths, not to the entire team's…

M'gann pressed a finger to her temple, closing her eyes and focusing. Conner moved past her to wrench the new door off its hinges only to find himself facing an entire squad of armed guards.

"Down!" Robin shouted, grabbing M'gann and pulling her to the floor with him as the bullets rang out over all their heads – even Garth had gotten the message.

Superboy and Artemis were up in an instant, the Boy of Steel barreling through the door and simply hurling himself at the nearest clump of guards, knocking them over and throwing off their aim enough that Artemis could take out the remaining two with a double shot. A moment later Garth was among them, electricity sparking at his fingertips, and the men who had gone down stayed down.

"Anything?" Robin asked Miss Martian, who looked shaken.

"He's here," she said uncertainly, eyes still shut as she used her telepathic powers. "But the signal, his mind, it's…it comes and goes, like he's…_ahhh!_"

She cried out and clutched her head, doubling over in pain. Alarmed, Robin reached out to grab her shoulder.

"What's happening?" he demanded. "What's going on?"

"I don't know," gasped M'gann, struggling to her feet. "I can't hold onto his signal, it's like…like he's barely there. They're hurting him. We have to find him, quickly!"

"Superboy, Garth, continue down to the base floor," Robin ordered, taking charge of the situation. "Artemis, Miss Martian, you're with me." He stepped through broken door and into the second-floor corridor as Conner repeated the order to Garth in Atlantean and the two made for the stairwell again.

The second the two strongmen had disappeared, a fresh wave of guards came storming around the corner, guns blazing.

"Naturally," muttered Artemis, whipping two arrows from her quiver and firing them off with impeccable accuracy; with a shout, her two targets were down. "Send all the guns for the squad with the two humans."

"Keep moving!" Robin shouted, ducking and weaving and firing off birdarangs all over the place; one took out the lighting fixtures, plunging the windowless corridor into total darkness as the whole system shorted out. "And um, switch to infrared!"

The confusion worked to their advantage as the goons tumbled over one another, unable to see in the sudden darkness, and M'gann soon had them shut into a side room, using her telekinesis to pile several pieces of heavy equipment in front of the door. They wouldn't be getting out anytime soon.

"Well played," Robin nodded approvingly. "Totally meant to do that."

"Sure," Artemis muttered. "Let's get moving."

They sprinted down the hallway, which didn't seem to have many doors – halfway down, there was one, but the only thing beyond it was a long, high-ceilinged room with a raised swimming pool. Drained and dry, it was as empty as the room itself.

"Robin to Superboy," Robin spoke into his comm as they continued down the hallway in search of more rooms. "Are you at the base level yet?"

"Yeah," Conner replied with a grunt; in the background, there was the sound of a loud crash and a series of alarmed yells. "Full of guards. Working on it. Haven't found Manta."

"We're looking for Kaldur first, then Manta," Robin reminded his vengeance-prone friend. "Keep me updated. KF? Red Arrow? Status?"

* * *

><p>"This place is deserted," Wally complained, zipping back and forth between the sides of the corridor to poke his head into each new door. "It's all weird science tech stuff, haven't seen most of these machines before in my life. And trust me, I've seen some pretty obscure science tech stuff. There was this one time when Uncle Barry let me come with him to work and there was this…"<p>

Roy didn't respond to the speedster's chatter, striding purposefully through the center of the hall, an arrow already nocked to his bow. He knew he couldn't keep up with Wally so he wasn't trying, using his eyes rather than his feet to search. At least KF was right about one thing – the place was eerily quiet on this floor.

"Weird," said Wally, tugging on the handle to a door towards the end of the corridor. "This one's locked."

"Search the rest," said Roy, coming to stand before it. "I'll work on this."

As Wally nodded and sped off, Roy unstrapped a line of canisters from his leg and popped the top off of one of them, withdrawing a large chunk of a putty-like substance. Separating it into two pieces, he stepped forward and pressed both into the crack of the doorway where the hinges would naturally be. Then he backed off, pulling a particular arrow from his quicker and nocking it to his bow.

"Stand back," he called to Wally, who skidded to a halt beside him.

"Rest are empty," the speedster reported. "What are you – "

Roy released his arrow, which whistled through the air to strike the door right between the two chunks of plastic explosive, then stuck there, a red light flashing on its fat, blunt tip.

"Cover your ears," he ordered.

Wally obeyed, and just in time – the red light at the arrowtip suddenly went solid and the whole thing blew, setting off a chain reaction that blasted the door right off its hinges and skidding into the room beyond.

"Oh," said Wally as the two of them stepped across the detritus and into the room. "That."

But Roy was not listening. His eyes were fixed on something much more important – an upright tank in at the center of the otherwise empty room, steam rising from its top and a familiar figure suspended inside it.


	11. Eleven

"_Kaldur!"_

"Red Arrow to Robin, we've found Aqualad, southeast corner on the third floor," Roy barked into his comm as the two of them rushed forward. Robin shouted something in reply but the archer wasn't paying attention, already focused on the next step. He drew a weighted arrow from his quiver, firing it off quickly, and it struck the tank straight-on, sending cracks snaking through the glass.

"Stand clear," he directed Wally, following his own advice as the pressure of the water inside began to push out on the compromised side of the tank, furthering the cracks. Then he drew one more arrow, angling it so that even if it burst through the tank it would not strike their friend, and fired.

The glass shattered. Water gushed forth, hissing and steaming, and it took the two of them a split second too long to register what that meant before the splashback struck them.

It was _boiling_. Perhaps not in the literal sense, but enough to make both boys cry out in pain and jump backwards. And suddenly, there was another alarm going off, some horrible, piercing noise right in their ears, and what had seemed to be air vents in the ceiling were opening up and men were _pouring_ out of them, dropping down lines and drawing weapons.

"KF to team, everyone get your asses up here, stat!" Wally shouted into his comm, ducking as gunfire burst out over his head. Roy had drawn a sharp-tipped arrow and fired it up at the lines the men were using to drop in, severing one so that the newcomers dropped onto the men below, but they were still outnumbered ten to one, and Kaldur sagged in the mechanical bonds that had bound him to the tank before, unmoving. They needed to retreat, but retreat was not an option.

"On our way," Robin's voice crackled back, but noise interference indicated all was not going perfectly smoothly on that end, either.

"Got a plan?" shouted Wally from across the room to Roy as both of them furiously dodged multiple attackers. Close-range didn't suit either of them – Roy couldn't fire a shot with this little distance between him and his target, and Wally needed open space to really get going, but neither of them had that luxury at the moment.

"Defend Aqualad!" Roy yelled back, smashing the blunt side of his bow into one goon's stomach while he rolled out of the way of another's attempted grab. The one blessing of being thoroughly outnumbered was that the enemy couldn't shoot at them without risking shooting each other, too, so it had come down to an intense hand-to-hand affair.

Wally yelled back an affirmative, and they began to fight their way towards the center of the room and their unconscious ally. Perhaps because he was clearly incapacitated, none of the guards had even attempted to attack the Atlantean; then a worse thought struck Roy and he grit his teeth, fighting ever-harder to get to his friend. He had to find out if they had come in time.

As they reached the dais upon which the tank was mounted, Roy leapt up, firing off an explosive arrow that sent the guards scattering for just a moment. He used the brief second to reach out and grab his friend's arm, fingers sliding to his wrist urgently.

_Please. A pulse. Anything to say we aren't too late._

Yet to his surprise, at the touch of his hand, Kaldur's eyes slid slowly half-open.

Just at that moment, one of the gunmen in the enemy party found a clear enough shot to fire at him, and Roy was forced to throw himself from the dais to dodge. The bullet shattered the remaining wall of the tank on Kaldur's left, glass shards raining down onto the concrete floor, but Roy was up in an instant, struggling to get back to his friend. How was it possible that after all that, he was still awake?

Through blurred vision, Kaldur watched it all happen like a movie watched half asleep, figures swarming on and off the screen without meaning anything. He saw Kid Flash go down, tripped by a chain that had suddenly twisted itself around his leg, saw the goons piling on top of the speedster to hold him to the ground as he cried out in fear and pain; the sound echoed dully in Kaldur's ears. As his eyes traveled to his other side, he watched as Red Arrow was barreled over by a man twice his size and dealt a sickening blow to the head that left him on his knees, spitting out blood, and somewhere inside, something was _screaming _at him to help them - _team leader, my responsibility, my fault if - _but none of it could quite reach the surface, too buried beneath the merciful numbness his body had chosen.

He slipped his eyes shut a moment when a new sound jarred them back open, a harsh explosive noise to his left, and suddenly the men were falling away from Wally as birdarangs flew at them with deadly accuracy, while green-fletched arrows rained down upon Roy's attackers, driving them back, and giving Artemis room to rush to his defense. When he felt a faint rush of air at his front, Kaldur lifted his eyes up to see Miss Martian floating before him, reaching towards his bonds, and her voice was filling his head, clearer than anything he had heard in what felt like an eternity.

_Hold on, _she urged him as she wrenched the mechanical clasps apart with her mind, freeing him from the tank's constraints. He sagged forward, too weak to stand on his own, but suddenly Superboy was there, strong arms catching his leader before he could hit the ground and holding his broken body upright. _We're here now, Kaldur, just hold on._

Sparks of electricity leapt through the air as Garth joined the fray, covering Robin's back as he fought to reach Wally's side. The speedster was lying semiconscious on the ground, blood dripping from his broken nose, but soon his friend was standing over him and hoisting him to his feet, glaring a challenge to the remaining goons around them.

"I dare you," he growled.

On the other side of the room, the two archers rose up, back to back, bowstrings taut and arrows aimed in threat, and the action suddenly slowed to a halt as the guards seemed to realize the tide had turned.

"Kaldur," Garth called out, leaping up on the dais to take his friend from Conner and lower him gently to the ground. "_Kaldur, eltaphos, re'intorn ax elbeaht ondu?" _

_Kaldur, my brother,_ _what have they done to you?_

"Clearly not enough," said a new voice from the door, harsh and mechanically distorted.

Before anyone could so much as finish turning around, Superboy had charged, letting out a furious roar as he tore straight at the newcomer with murder in his eyes. But midway through his mad rush, Manta lifted his arm and out of the heavy, metal-gloved hand of his suit burst a ray of brilliant red light that sent the clone flying backwards and slamming into a wall with a groan of pain.

The team burst into action. Robin, Artemis and Red Arrow immediately let loose a full volley of arrows and birdarangs, the two archers throwing in a few choices curses with their projectiles, but Manta lifted his arm once more, firing off the same beam that had felled Conner, and their attacks disintegrated in midair. Undeterred, the three of them redoubled their efforts, attempting to angle differently to make their enemy's job harder and forcing him to take a few steps back.

As the rest of Manta's goons rose as if to rejoin the fight, Miss Martian turned around and lifted them all into the air telepathically, her eyes glowing with the effort, then she dropped them back onto the hard concrete ground. For the most part they lay still, but a few stirred, groaning; Wally, still barely conscious from his earlier beating, kicked one of them for good measure, and the man fell silent, then from the dais, still cradling Kaldur's head in his lap, Garth lifted his hand and a few jolts of electricity leapt from his fingers to take care of the rest.

"As much as your games amuse me, I had a different ending in mind for our engagement," Manta remarked, stepping cleanly out of the way of one of Roy's arrows and knocking one of Artemis's out of the air with the arm of his combat suit. Then he lifted his other hand, a small device blinking in his hand.

"KF!" Robin shouted urgently, hurling a birdarang that Manta knocked aside. But before the speedster could make a move, Manta had pressed down the top, and the blinking changed to solid red, and the whole room held its breath for a moment, and _nothing happened._

"It's a pity Aquaman couldn't be bothered to collect his trash himself," remarked Manta.

Then he turned to leave.

The second he set foot outside the room, everything exploded.

The roof above their heads shattered in a roar of fire and billowing smoke and falling concrete, and M'gann, who had been floating up near it, screamed and plummeted to the ground with the rest of the debris as it buried them all. At the same time, something deep below them rumbled and shook and suddenly gave way, and the whole structure began to jerk and shift and tilt as the foundations seemed to crumble beneath them.

"Miss Martian, get us out of here!" Robin yelled furiously, dodging up through the collapse as only he could, narrowing avoiding being crushed beneath the fragmented ceiling. But there was no response. Robin grit his teeth in desperation – the half-destroyed building was still swaying dangerously, threatening to tip them all into the ocean, and he couldn't even see any of the others.

"Who's still with me?" he cried out as the debris began to edge towards the water. Even as he spoke, he was crouching to try and dig Wally out from beneath the rubble, scrabbling furiously at the chunks that had buried his friend alive, but everything was starting to tip, and for once in his life, his own heart rate was starting to rise.

A large chunk of the fallen roof shifted as Conner lifted it off himself and tossed it aside with a grunt, then a second later, a woozy Artemis extracted herself from the rubble, using her bow to help herself stand. But Roy, Wally, M'gann, Garth and Kaldur neither responded nor surfaced, and even as their teammates moved to help them, the whole building suddenly jerked and everything began to slide oceanside – the team, the debris of the blown-out room, the goons, the whole top half of the building, all caught by undeniable gravity – and there was nothing to grapple to and nothing to hold onto and suddenly they were all falling falling _falling_ so fast it didn't even feel real yet it seemed an age before they hit the water and plunged so deep the surface seemed a dream up above them, not something real, not someplace they could actually go.

Garth opened his eyes as he submerged, the water rushing over him like a salve. Blood still flowed freely from his back, where a large chunk of shrapnel had struck him as he'd shielded Kaldur from the falling roof with his own body, but he seemed to forget that, reaching out for his friend's arm instead and pulling him close.

"Kaldur," he spoke, grasping the other boy's shoulders and squeezing them as gently as he could. _"Ondun falwehn es'ta'ahl."_

_You must awaken._

Kaldur's eyes slid slowly open once more, taking in the scene around them as if in a trance. They were sinking rapidly, already a dozen meters below the waves, and with them were sinking all the others – Conner, cradling M'gann's still form in his arms as he tried with furious kicks to slow their descent and return to the surface; Wally, his body already convulsing as his unconscious body breathed in water; Artemis, struggling not to do the same; Roy, drifting lifelessly as he bled out from the ripped skin in his right arm where the broken bone protruded; Robin, still and composed but clearly out of air and looking to Kaldur as if he were their only hope now. And all around them, Manta's men and the remains of the destroyed warehouse, all descending through the water like some deathly downward procession.

"_Ondun falwehn me'alkor rant__ëth. Mi'alben chorel wirromven, ölban ecktahr li'p'all. Ondun falwehn me'alkor__ rant__ëth, Kaldur." _

Garth stared into his friend's eyes desperately, holding out his hands to him palm-up, the light already beginning to glow on his own skin.

_You must save them. I cannot do it alone. They are your people. You must save them, Kaldur._

Kaldur lifted his own arm through the water, fighting past the incredible protest of his ruined body.

Ölban.

There was no simple translation. Your people. Your chosen ones. Your clan.

Your family.

Trembling with the effort, Kaldur slid his hand onto Garth's arm, the skin just barely meeting, and in an instant the light spread through them both, winding across their limbs and over their bodies like brilliant snakes that glowed impossibly bright between them. Even as they each reached a hand down towards the ocean floor, their gaze lifted up to the surface and to the drowning land-dwellers above them.

The pain that wracked Kaldur's body as he summoned his power in that moment was worse than anything Manta had subjected him to, worse than anything he had felt before in his life, and for a moment he thought he might die of it right then and there. But he had nothing extra to give – no scream, no jerk of his body to indicate the agony coursing through every vein in him; there was no room for it as he beckoned the waters beneath them up, drawing on Garth's power as well as his own to summon the great wave.

As pain and power coursed through him in equal measure, it was like pushing on a great weight – at first, nothing happened, and there was only the effort and the agony and the doubt. Then something gave, and from deep below, he felt the water give way, the first few droplets obeying and rushing upwards as more and more flowed to join their ranks in a great push towards the surface, a galloping surge that gathered strength and speed and size until it became a whirling current that swallowed them all in its path and coursed hungrily upwards towards the sunlight, buoying them up like a saving hand, lifting them up like an offering, sending them up like a prayer answered, and then they were all bursting clear of the water, hurled towards the rocky shore on the wings of that great wave with all the power of the ocean itself. In the last instant before they struck land, Kaldur surrendered their fate to momentum and let himself slip into the true dark.


	12. Twelve

Kaldur's eyes cracked half open. Batman was standing over him. The Dark Knight came between him and the sun, casting an imposing shadow across his body. The relief from the light was welcome. He couldn't feel anything.

* * *

><p>Someone was sobbing. M'gann, from the sound of it. His immediate impulse was to go to her, but he couldn't move.<p>

"_I read the researchers' minds…" _she was gasping. _"The things they did…oh God…the things they did to him…"_

Then J'onn's voice, deep and soothing.

"_Hush, little one. It is done."_

* * *

><p>"<em>Wally, if you don't keep still, I swear I will design an experiment that will revoke your powers, and then have your mother ground you for life."<em>

Flash's voice.

_"Let me b__**go**__/b, where are they, OW, is everyone…"_

b_"__**Wally**__."/b_

A pause, and a whimper of pain. Then a sigh.

"_Take it easy, Kid. They're going to be okay."_

* * *

><p>"<em>Where is he?"<em>

Batman this time, gruff and impatient. Kaldur opened his eyes once more.

"_Mid-Nite's still patching him up. You saw the beating he took."_

Kaldur let his head roll to one side. Green Arrow and Artemis were crouched over Roy on the rocky shore. Their bodies blocked his face. What he could see of Roy's lay still. Kaldur wondered.

"_He's had worse. Tell Mid-Nite he needs to get down here immediately."_

"_But he – "_

" – _this is more important."_

"_Understood."_

* * *

><p>"…<em>alfen tabor…meahcolla…učinne…mo'ra…ondun quintd'mo…russ…Òxuss forca…th…d'bailar…alkor."<em>

Why was Conner speaking Atlantean? Kaldur could only hear every other word.

"…_endun ah'irchel…cordat…__m__ë__det v'ndeth….Kaldur'ahm __ôn Tula…o'barnth en…Annex Orin!"_

Garth's last two words rang out louder than his previous ones. Several people stirred around Kaldur; he felt the stones around him shift as they moved away from him, clearing a path. Then suddenly, Orin was there, was by his side, was falling to his knees and reaching out with bloodied arms to pull Kaldur to his chest, tears trickling into his beard as he whispered "_Kaldur'ahm, pǽdun, pǽdun," my child, my child, _and in that moment it didn't matter that it was just an expression, just something the king said to all his subjects; Kaldur knew Orin was speaking for him alone, and he closed his eyes and gave himself back to the darkness knowing that he was safe now. It was all over.

* * *

><p>When he next awoke, he panicked and shattered the entire infirmary tank from within, inadvertently drenching a very surprised Wally, who had been sitting in the nearest chair at the time. As the medical alarms went off, terrifying him yet further, Black Canary rushed into the room and promptly put her first through the whole damn system, which was apparently a way of shutting it up. Then she placed her other hand flat on the Atlantean's heaving chest and looked straight into his wide, frightened eyes.<p>

"It's us, Kaldur," she told him, her tone firm and unyielding and yet somehow gentle all at once. "You're safe now. It's okay."

As his heartbeat gradually slowed its frantic race and his breathing calmed just a little, Kaldur turned to look at Wally, who was huddling in the corner, his face scraped from the broken glass and his clothes dripping wet.

"I am sorry," the older boy rasped, lowering himself back onto his elbows. His body was trembling violently and he couldn't seem to control it. "The…the tank, it…"

"It's okay," Wally squeaked, shaking his head. "Um are…are you, though? Okay, I mean."

Before Kaldur could answer, Canary interjected, stepping between the two beds and brushing some of the broken glass off Kaldur's chest and onto the ground.

"Let's get you into a regular bed," she frowned. "Maybe the tank wasn't the best idea, all things considered."

"I…did not mean to destroy it. I am sorry."

An expensive piece of League equipment, and he'd smashed the whole thing. It had only existed for himself and Orin in the first place. He looked away, ashamed. Canary put a hand on his arm, shaking her head.

"Don't worry about it. Really."

She reached out her hand, gesturing Wally to come help her. Carefully, the two of them helped Kaldur to the other side of the infirmary and onto one of the standard-issue beds, propping him up on the pillows. Wally awkwardly pulled a blanket up over the older boy, looking nervous and unsure.

"I'm going to reinsert your IV, all right?" said Canary, pressing a few buttons on one of the medical computers. Kaldur nodded shakily, looking around the room to remind himself that this was not Manta's lab, that he was among friends, that it was over. It occurred to him a moment later that they _could_ have restrained him in the med-tank if they'd wanted to, prevented him from destroying it the way he had, but someone had decided that his peace of mind upon awakening was more important than the equipment itself. That in itself counted for a lot.

As Canary slid the needle into his arm and taped it in place, reaching up to adjust the pouch to which it was attached, he looked over at the window and noticed that the bed closest to it was unmade. Wally followed his gaze.

"Roy," the speedster offered in explanation.

"Is he…"

"He's fine," Canary assured him, putting a hand on his shoulder and squeezing it briefly. "I need to go look after a few things, but someone is always around, okay? Just press the call button, or send Kid Flash out for one of us."

He nodded, watching her pick her way through the mess of the broken tank.

There was a moment of silence; Wally was still hovering over the bed as if afraid Kaldur was going to bust out of that, too.

"Wally…is there something you wanted to say?"

Face reddening, the speedster shook his head quickly and backed off a step.

"No, sorry, it's just…I'm just…really glad you're, you know, awake, among other things," he tried to explain. "Sorry. I can go away if you want to rest."

"It is fine," Kaldur reassured him. He was glad of the company. "How long have I been asleep?"

"Two days," Wally mumbled. "Maybe more like a day and a half."

Kaldur shook his head. Valuable time, wasted to his own weakness.

"And the others?"

"They're fine. Everybody's got bruises, well not Conner but um, you know what I mean. But we're all fine, just a bit banged up. I've got super healing so I'm fine, and Rob and Artemis didn't do too bad in the first place. Your friend has thick skin like you, and once M'gann cooled off a bit she was pretty much okay, so you don't need to worry about that. Roy…Roy's got a concussion and his arm's busted pretty bad which is somehow making him even grouchier than usual but really, we're all worried about you more than…more than anything else. Are you…did you…I mean…"

"There is much of it I do not remember."

There was also much of it he did, but he had no desire to relive any of it at the moment.

The speedster fell silent, then after a moment, moved to take a seat on the next bed over, rubbing his hands together anxiously.

"Is something bothering you, Wally?"

Wally took a deep breath, glancing out the window before he looked back at Kaldur.

"Look…I…" he mumbled. "I said some stuff on that last mission that I'm not proud of and I…I'm really sorry, Kal. Honest."

"There is no need to apologize."

"But there _is_," Wally objected. "I…it's your job to lead us, and sometimes that means you don't get to be our best friend. You did what you had to do. It…it was wrong of me to blame you for that. Wrong of all of us. I'm really, really sorry."

Kaldur was silent a moment, thinking. But just when he opened his mouth to reply, a new voice interrupted them from the doorway.

"He's up!"

Both of them looked up to see the rest of the team gathered in the doorway, four heads all poking inside curiously. Robin's face fell in surprise as he saw the mess of shattered glass and broken tubes that had been the med-tank.

"What happened?" he asked in bewilderment, stepping inside. The shards crunched beneath his sneakered feet.

"An accident. Don't worry about it," Wally said, glancing at Kaldur, who gave a tiny nod of gratitude.

As M'gann used her telepathy to sweep the remains of the tank up and out of the way, the other three moved across the room to crowd around Kaldur's bedside, looming over him excitedly.

"How're you feeling?" Artemis asked, sitting down on the edge of his bed and placing her hand over his own.

"Alive," he responded with a tired smile.

Robin gave a short laugh, hands in his pockets, eyes shielded by his usual sunglasses.

"You had us worried there for a little while."

"I am sorry. I did not mean to…"

"Jesus, Kaldur, don't apologize," Artemis interrupted, rolling her eyes. "You're what? Really sorry you almost died saving us all?"

"I…" Kaldur started, then trailed off sheepishly, avoiding their eyes.

"Yeah, that rescue mission didn't go exactly as planned," Robin confessed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Sorry about that."

"Good thing you're tough as rocks," said Artemis with a rare grin.

M'gann suddenly appeared at the foot of the bed, smiling a little nervously down at Kaldur, who was beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic from all the attention.

"Are you hungry?" she asked. "I can make you something if you want, we've just been hanging around for two days so I've been cooking a lot, and I know you've been out for a long time so if you wanted something to eat I could…"

"I am fine," Kaldur interrupted, cutting off her anxious babbling. He really had no appetite. Not yet, anyway. As her face fell, he gave her a reassuring smile – he hadn't meant to hurt her feelings. "Thank you, M'gann. Perhaps in a little while."

As he finished speaking out loud, her voice sounded in his head, gentle and worried.

_I know what you've been through,_ she spoke softly, to him alone. _If you ever want to talk…_

_Have you told the others?_

_No. Just…just Batman. In…in the debriefing. He wanted to know._

_That is fine. I…would prefer you told no one else._

_Kaldur…_

_Please._

He met her eyes, his expression serious.

_All right._ she relented._ But promise me, if you need to talk…_

_I will come to you. Thank you._

"Your friends from Atlantis are here, by the way," Robin said, breaking the physical silence that had taken the group during their conversation. "I don't think they like us very much."

"Yeah, the redhead is really cute, though."

"Wally!"

"What? I'm just being honest."

"Yeah well let _me_ be honest for a second and tell you that there is no chance on Earth, hell or Atlantis that…"

Kaldur closed his eyes, tuning out the noise as Wally and Artemis slipped into their familiar bickering. In some ways it was almost relaxing, to know that the team had come out of all of this the same, that it hadn't changed anything between them. But he was exhausted, and however much he appreciated that they cared, he was beginning to want nothing more than to be left alone so he could sleep.

"Don't you people have anything better to do?"

The group turned in surprise to the look to the door, where a very cranky looking Roy was standing, his right arm in a sling and his left on the doorframe.

"What's your damage, Red Arrow?" Artemis glared.

"You want the whole list?" Roy shot back.

Kaldur sighed. Truly, nothing changed.

"Is it your nap time, old man?" Wally teased as Roy made his way towards them.

"Yes," the archer snapped. "And Kaldur's too, I'd imagine, so you should all stop smothering him with affection and go have playtime or something. He's put up with enough for one week."

Grumbling, the team turned to leave - everyone seemed to realize the truth in Roy's words, despite their harshness. But before Conner reached the door, he turned back and spoke for the first time, in Atlantean:

"_Your friend, Garth…he told me about Tula. Why didn't you tell anyone?"_

"This is a really annoying development," Robin complained as the rest of them shuffled out of the room. "I speak seven languages but this isn't one of them. I feel left out."

Wally and Artemis rolled their eyes as they followed him out the door.

"_It is a personal matter. I did not think the team needed to know," _Kaldur replied, frowning.

"_I'm not talking about the team, Kaldur, I'm talking about your friends. You could have talked to us. You don't have to bottle it up. We care."_

"_I know you do,"_ Kaldur replied softly. _"I will try to be more open. It is not that I do not trust you, it is more that I do not wish to be a burden. But you are my friends. I owe you the truth."_

Conner gave him a quiet smile.

"_You're never a burden, okay? Sleep well. It's good to have you back._

Then he went after the others, shutting the door behind him and leaving Kaldur and Roy alone in the infirmary.

"Get some rest," said the archer gently, all the grouchiness gone from his voice as he sat down on the edge of his own bed. "I know you need it."

"Thank you," Kaldur murmured drowsily, letting his eyes slip shut. He had many things to say, but was too tired just then, too drained from the whole ordeal, and he knew of all people, Roy could wait. "Good night, my friend."

"Good night, Kaldur."

* * *

><p>When he awoke, he was alone, it was dark outside, Roy's bed was stripped bare, and there was a note on his bedstand.<p>

_Kaldur – _

_I don't care who your father is or isn't. You're the closest thing to a brother I'll ever have, and anyone who picks a fight with you is picking a fight with me too, so if you were thinking of giving me some speech about how I shouldn't have gotten my ass kicked coming after you, you can save it. By the time you read this, I'll be gone – I've worn out my welcome here – but know that I've got your back, whether you like it or not. _

– _Roy_

Kaldur couldn't help but smile as he returned the note to the nightstand. Trust Roy to put a such a noble sentiment into such callous words.

Setting his blanket aside and removing his IV, Kaldur sat up and slid his legs off the bed, bare feet sliding onto the cool floor. Then he stood cautiously, testing his strength, and found that he could hold himself up. Good. He was already tired of relying on others to help him.

With small steps that gradually got surer and surer, he made his way out of the infirmary and into the hallway beyond. He still felt weak, but it was a bearable weakness now, and the pain had died down to the point that he could ignore it when given something else to focus on.

"Kaldur'ahm," said a familiar voice, and he turned to see Orin standing there, the worry showing clearly on his face. "You should not be out of bed."

"I feel fine, my king," he responded, raising his arm to salute, but Orin waved him off quickly.

"You have been through much. You must rest."

"With all due respect, your majesty, I have rested plenty, to the point where my mind itself has grown restless."

"Well…if that is truly the case, the queen and I have something we wish to discuss with you," Orin offered. "You must be hungry. Perhaps you would join us over a meal."

Kaldur nodded, noticing suddenly how famished he really was.

"I would welcome it."

It was strange to him to see the two of them there in the Cave kitchen – M'gann had been rather starry-eyed as she'd handed control of her domain over to the Atlantean royalty – but somehow also quite right. It was an odd blending of his two worlds, to have Orin and Mera there at the steel dining table rather than at their grander one in Atlantis, but the two of them seemed quite at home, refusing to let Kaldur help with the meal and forcing him to sit while they prepared it themselves instead. Though Mera was wearing a sweeping gown that covered much more of her than her usual Atlantean garb, Kaldur could still see the subtle swell of her stomach, and was reminded of her expectancy.

Finally, they sat down opposite him to eat, filling his plate with bread and fish and a traditional Atlantean seaweed soup. Every so often, one of Kaldur's teammates would appear in the archway entrance to the kitchen and abruptly disappear, not wanting to interrupt but clearly curious about what was going on.

"Not to speak out of my place, my king, but you said you had a matter to discuss with me?"

They had finished the meal, the empty plates still in front of them. Orin glanced to Mera, who gave him an encouraging nod.

"We had intended to speak with you about this sooner," he began, folding his hands on the table before him. "But League business and the affairs of the government at home…distracted me. We wish to ask a great favor of you, Kaldur'ahm, if you would accept it."

"I am your servant, as ever," Kaldur responded humbly, bowing his head. Orin looked to Mera, who placed her hand over her husband's and gave his protégé an earnest smile.

"If all goes well, in a few months, there will be an heir to the throne," she said, laying a hand on her stomach. "We would be honored if you would serve as our child's _p__ǽ__trun._"

Kaldur's eyes widened in surprise – perhaps the closest land equivalent of the earth was _godfather, _but in Atlantis the concept ran deeper. It was considered a binding relationship, a true family tie. It was more than an honor; it was a responsibility.

"What of Prince Orm?" he asked in confusion, too surprised to remember his manners.

"My brother will always be by my side," Orin reassured him. "The same blood runs through our veins, and I am confident he will be a part of the heir's life one way or another. But the queen and I want our child to know your face, Kaldur'ahm – you may have chosen the surface world, but a part of you will always belong in Atlantis."

Kaldur felt something swelling inside him, a rush of overwhelming gratitude and pride and perhaps even love that warmed him from the inside out. Hiding the unseemly display of emotion with a bow of his head, he raised his hand to his forehead in salute.

"It would be my greatest honor, your majesties."

"It is settled, then," Mera smiled as Orin slid an arm around his wife's shoulder. "I trust you will attend the ceremony when the time comes."

"Of course."

* * *

><p>After what felt like an age of convincing Black Canary, Orin and Mera that he felt well enough to return to his own home, Kaldur finally found himself standing in the cool night air, toes sinking into the sand of the beach on Mount Justice. Garth and Tula stood beside him – the king and queen had insisted he allow someone to accompany him home – and the whole team had come out to wish him farewell as the moon reflected off the calm ocean behind them all.<p>

As Orin pulled him into a firm embrace, the king spoke quietly into his ear:

"I am sorry I kept the truth from you, Kaldur'ahm. I had hoped there would never be a need."

Kaldur pulled away, shaking his head.

"There is nothing to forgive. You did what you saw fit."

As he turned to wade into the ocean, he recalled the last time he had entered these waters – he had been alone, with the team's anger at his back and his own doubt plaguing him. Tonight, it was different. The people he loved had gathered on the shore to see him off, and a strange sort of peace filled him, despite everything that had happened in the last week.

With Tula and Garth at his side, he slipped beneath the waves and began to swim, gliding easily through the water towards home. There was a silence between them that could never quite be easy, but it was comfortable enough. At last, Kaldur was the one to break it.

"Did you know?" he asked quietly.

"Know what?" asked Tula. Her voice was silvery and gentle as ever.

"Of my roots."

Tula and Garth exchanged a look as they swam along half a length behind their friend.

"Yes," Garth said at last. "We had guessed."

"Yet you befriended me anyway."

"Blood does not define us," said Garth simply.

They swam on.

"Why did you never tell me?" Kaldur asked, frowning. It seemed everyone had known before him.

"We never thought of you as Black Manta's son," Tula shrugged. "You were – are – Kaldur'ahm, our friend You are your own person."

"Your path was your own," Garth agreed with a nod. "He was no more part of your story than any other enemy of the kingdom."

"And…we thought you knew," Tula finished guiltily.

Kaldur was silent as they continued on, until at last they were walking up out of the waves, across the shore towards the plain apartment building that he called home on land. As they approached, he turned to face his friends.

"I have much to think about," he said softly. "You must forgive me if I am not as hospitable as I should be."

"You are entitled to your thoughts, brother," Garth nodded, stepping forward to clasp Kaldur's arms warmly. "But remember us if you ever wish to share them."

"We miss you," added Tula a little sadly, stepping forward as if to do the same, then suddenly throwing her arms around him and embracing him instead.

"Please don't be a stranger," she whispered.

He smiled faintly.

"I will do my best," he replied, and let her go.

His apartment was exactly as he'd left it, and the familiarity washed over him comfortingly as he readied himself for sleep. For the first time in more than a week, he was truly alone, yet somehow he was not lonely. He could think in this quiet. And as he lowered himself gently into his bed of water and shut his eyes, he felt a peace that had eluded him for so long, he wasn't sure he ever remembered it.

He did not belong to the in-between. He was not a lost child of the divide, caught between worlds, but a beloved child of both, just as much a part of one as he was of the other. And he could be what his team needed him to be.

Manta had showed him that.

* * *

><p>Kaldur stood before the mirror in the morning light, staring into the face that belonged to another, yet was somehow his own. The scars were healing and his body had grown strong again. He was ready.<p>

_Recognized: Aqualad, B-02._

Batman was waiting for him, holding his reconstructed waterbearers. Behind him, the team stood ready in full mission gear, all watching their leader approach. As Kaldur stepped forward, the Dark Knight held out his weapons, and without hesitation, the young hero took them and sheathed them into the pack on his back with a practiced gesture.

Batman nodded approvingly.

"Welcome back," he said, stepping back to clear the path between Kaldur and the others. "Your team is waiting."


End file.
